Ok so I had this "guy" swap in a dohc zc from hmotors in my rex and he lied to me and said that the tdc mark was off and wouldnt align to the marks on the cover. When I picked up the car he showed me the cam timing was aligned to the head but the tdc mark was a little advanced from the mark on timing belt cover. the car was also throwing a code for the cps code 9, The engine did not run well but i thought it was because it had a cel and was in limp mode. SO for a few days I tried to diagnose the code 9 thinking that the cams were timed. I finally realized that somehow, someone , somewhere. retarded the timing on the dizzy all the way and thats why I was throwing code 9. when I advanced the dizzy just a little bit the code went away but the car still ran like crap. no power , bogging, hesitation. etc. so I decided to check the ignition timing and it was way retarded with a stock light mind you and I couldn;t get it to advance where it should be. SO I talked to some people here and I find out that my tdc mark should align to the markl on the timing cover and checking that I could see that my intake cam was off a tooth.

Long story short , i went to adjust it last night, and when I would loosen the tensioner and turn the engine to tighten the belt would slip off that gear. wtf! I was trying to do this by myself so I stopped. I had only turned the engine 180 degrees and I could see that my cams were way off. I never felt any thing when turning the engine, it felt as free as when I adjust my valves. I got a friend over to help me tighten the belt back up and adjust the cam gears. but i messed up and loosened the tensioner bolt too much and now I need to take the crank pulley off, motor mount, blah blah blah blah

MY QUESTION IS >>> I have a feeling this guy ( he is an ht member) screwed me. I have a feeling that he might have bent some valves and covered it up by retarded the timing so i would think it was the cps and nolt realize until long after he was gone that my valves are bent. I really dont think I bent them myself. plus I dont even know. If I turned the engine with the cam gears like 3 tol 4 teeth of by hand wouldnt i feel the pressure when rotating of the pistion hitting the valve or am I still good since I never started the engine or what? sorry such a long post but I really needed to clear my head and get some good advice. Please let me know what anyone here thinks about this wholee f(*&^-up situation. thanks

 

i doubt that the valves would get bent if the belt was off even 4 teeth. the reason that it runs like hell is because the cam timing what fubared, and as a concequence the ignition timing was all fubared. i think if anything he realized that he screwed up the cam timing so he screwed with the ignition timing to make it run a little better. ive seen cars that run with the belt off 1 tooth and instead of fixing it the right way the person who works on it just adjusts ignition timing to compensate.

get the belt on right and set the ignition timing and go from there, thats all you can do really.