Whats up guys, i wanted to share somthing with you all that hurts my heart and is embarrassing as hell. I was in a hurry, torquing my turbo mani down on the 97 fully built turbo h22 prelude. I left a 12mm wrench on the valve cover and shut the hood. I drove off for a test drive. The wrench was sucked into the cam gears completely stripping the intake side cam gears teath completly off leaving the wrench stuck between the timing belt and cam gear. I was only in 2nd gear going about 20 and the engine shut down...i feel stupid as **** at this point. I am awaiting new aem cam gears to ship. This weekend hopefully they will be here and i can replace timing belt and cam gears and carry on, assuming no damage was done. It will not crank over right now, but the motor sounds good while trying to start. PAY ATTENTION, DONT BE LIKE ME (KNUCKLEHEAD) AND LEAVE A WRENCH ON YOUR VALVE COVER AND DRIVE OFF. You will feel stupid for certain. Thanks..

 

Hopefully you only damaged your cam gear. Don’t try to start it until the new cam gears are on and the timing belt is on the right teeth/cam gears and crankshaft are at top dead center.

 

i did try and start it just once, it did not want to turn over. Hopefully that too didnt hurt it.

 

Turning the engine over without the timing components can be bad. You're going to want to do a leak down and compression test AFTER replacing the cam gear and re-setting manual timing. Or, you could pull the cams or loosen all the rockers all the way out and do the leak down test now if you wanted, but the compression test will have to wait. If you bent valves, you'll have to pull the head.

 

You’ll also need a new timing belt tensioner. It’s a one time use thing, once it’s in place, you can’t reuse it.

 

Actually it can... but you must be VERY careful not to lose even one drop of fluid from inside it.

 

I have aftermarket manual tensionor..

 

Assuming you have a cut valve cover this is why i always tell people to cover the cam gears!

I had a supercharger chuck a belt and a piece flew into my cam gears/timing belt and i blew the head! no more cut valve covers for me..