As the topic states.

Can the timing (cam/crank) on a B16A engine be so far off that when doing a CR test you get ZERO, yet there is no piston/valve contact at all and once the timing was reset the engine ran fine?

I personally thought that if the timing was that far off you'd have bent valves, and I figured that zero CR across the board meant you're pretty much screwed.

 

If it was off more than several teeth it is possible. Were you getting 0 in every cylinder?

Also, how does your comp. test look now that the problem is fixed?

 

Well it's not my car.

Here's the full story.

I work at a shop. I'm the service manager/writer, not the mechanic, but I know a few things about the cars. Anyways a guy called me up and said "I think I hydrolocked my engine, so I'm gonna tow it over to you to see what's wrong. It spins over, but won't start."

We get the car, and the first thing we do is pull the spark plugs out and spin the engine over to evacuate any water. We got some water spray out of the cylinders, and the plugs looked kind of rusted.

Anyways we do a CR test and we get zero across the board.

We told the guy he must have been right, and that he hydrolocked the engine and he needed to either come get the car or we'd drop a new engine in it.

Anyways long story, but the guy got arrested, car sat at our shop for 6 months, and we had the car towed off. He called back all pissy and says "all that was wrong was the timing" and whatnot, so I just figured I'd ask.

I apologized for apparently missing the timing issue, but i also told him that he specifically told us he hydrolocked the engine, we got water from the cylinders, the plugs were rusted, etc. and he had zero CR across all cylinders.

I had never seen/heard of timing being so far off as to read zero CR, yet have no internal engine damage at all.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by asubennett &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If it was off more than several teeth it is possible. Were you getting 0 in every cylinder?

Also, how does your comp. test look now that the problem is fixed?</TD></TR></TABLE>

You would have to get some kind of reading!!! No compression at all, that does not seem possible without piston valve contact being abundantly obvious

 

Well if it was off huge the intake valves could have been held open on one cylinder during the pistons compresion stroke. But you are right there would have been a massive mechanical failure . That is why I asked what the comp was after. I am betting it was very low still b/c of bent valves

 

Unfortunately I have no idea what the real story is after the dude got it running, because all he said was "we took the head off and reset the timing and it runs better than ever now. It pulls hard...etc."

I was thinking:

"Why if the timing being off was so obvious did you feel the need to pull the head off?"

But the businessman in me just said:

"Damn that's bizzare.

 

here is a fairly relevant story...

last year i was comming to a stop and my car just shut off. it would crank, but not fully turn over. my compression would come back ***, like 20psi per cyl. i thought i was done for. turns out my woodruff key came off the cam gear and the cam and the camgear were not spinning together at all. i got a new camgear and put everything back together and my compression was perfect, like 205 again. i never had a problem with it after. now this was on a d16z6, but the premise remains that my timing was so far out of syc that it would not start. im not kidding i cranked it every few days for a month and a half with the timing being off, and my compression results didnt show any loss of compression