2004 Honda Civic - No Start after Timing Job - HELP

So I bought this car with the hopes of fixing it and keeping it for myself. It's a nice little thing right in my budget. The description of the car on craigslist was that the timing belt broke while going about 25 mph. Even though I've read that people have gotten away with just changing the belt, I decided to change the head.

I got a used head from a junkyard that looked okay to me. It didn't have any damage. I put a new head gasket set and a timing belt and aligned the timing exactly on point. Put it all back together and now it won't start.

The starter just turns and so does the belt. I can turn the engine by hand without interference. No cranking noise. I checked the compression and it's a whopping 0 on all cylinders. Rechecked the timing and it's still good. What do you guys think?

 

Sounds like you're cam/crank sensor needs to be replaced. Which means the timing belt will need to be realigned.. Again.

 

Did you compression test it *correctly?* (spark plugs out, crank 4-5 times with no spark per cylinder)

If you're getting 0 on everything and you replaced the head gasket, sounds like you didn't tighten the head bolts properly and/or all of your valves are done. I'd lean toward a head gasket related issue personally. Make sure #1 is TDC INTAKE STROKE and not EXHAUST STROKE. (Try rotating timing for the crank 180 degrees)

 

best thing to do when pulling an unknown head is to have a machine shop vacuum test it and make sure it's in good shape if not rebuild it

 

Holmes, if it's already on there, I think the best course of action (read: most cost effective, no new gasket/bolts) would be to double and triple check TDC timing and compression test again. You have to mess up pretty hard or have an extreme out of spec head to get 0's across the board.