Alright....took old belt off, put new belt on along with manual tensioner.

Got done, start it up....something wasnt right, sounded horrible and was pinging like crazy for some reason. Got a timing light and timing seemed like it was at about 25 degrees or something. I had to retard the distributor wayyyy back to get back to stock 15degrees.

These pictures are with the crank at EXACTLY tdc. ARe the lines too far up making the exhaust cam advanced and the intake retarded? I just need to know what made the distributor timing mysteriously go to wayyy advance.

Where did I go wrong?????

 

Here is a picture of the crank during those pics.....perfect TDC. 2nd pic looks a little off but its just due to the camera angle.....its dead on across from the line in the middle of the > part.

 

What about your crank pulley, is it set at tdc? your cam gears are lined up from your pics. It "appears" tdc at the flywheel but did you double check at the crank pulley. There should be marks there.

 

The crank pulley is indexed with the key, so if the flywheel is perfect TDC, so is everything on the crank.

 

those marks look dead on to me

 

Incorrect Valve lash can throw off the timming.
try checking if the valves need adjusting.
Even still it shouldn't through the timming off that much

 

Valved were adjusted during the install.

Any other ideas? I just tried it again....took the belt off and redid it and the gears look the exact same.

 

What about the timming gear. Is that at TDC. The arrow should be pointing to the dot. . Just something else to look at.

 

What specs did you use when you set your valves? Also, you did torque the adjuster nuts down... right?

 

Everything was/is TDC. What are you calling the timing gear? The crank was set TDC by the mark on the flywheel, and the dot on the lower timing gear matched the mark on the block.

Valves were set between Honda spec....I've done it before, they're fine.

 

If I goofed on the alignment of the balancer belts could it cause this type of problem you think?

 

no the balancer belt is not nessasary for the motor to run, if you mesed the alignment up of that them you would just get a shaky motor, if you were way off.

now thinking logically if you had to retard the ignition timing way back my guess would be that the crank is off a couple of teeth. you cam gears look right on. if i were you i would take a spark plug out and use a long thin peice of wood or a screw driver if you want, and slowly rotate the engine until you find absolute top dead center by using the wood or screw driver (you know what i mean?) then once you think you are at TDC check you mark on the flywheel to see if that is corrrect.

people always used to ask me if doing the timing belt was hard and i tell them no, but when i did mine it took a VERY long time to quadruple check all my marks and line ups. ive even heard a case where a friend of mine had the garage do a "quick timing belt job" and they did it but actually one of the cams was off one tooth. and it ran fine just had alittel less power. then another problem with the car (crank pulley) required that the car be taken to the dealer ship and they foudn out it was off a tooth while repairing his shreaded timing belt cover and putting on new crank pulley. after they fixed it he said it had alot more power.

 

I'm pretty damn sure I put the balancer belt on wrong, so that could cause the whole thing (I'm hoping). Because I know how to set TDC, and its right on...and I've done this thing twice now in the past week with the same result. I had my buddy take a picture of his cam gears while at TDC and they look the exact same as mine.

I'll redo the balancer belt later today after school and see if it fixed anything.

 

The previous owner/belt install could have been off a tooth. i.e. the old belt could have been wrong. I've worked on cars like that. btw, How well did it run with the old belt? If you haven't done major decking of block or head, that install looks good to me...

 

With everything set TDC remember to check the distributor as well and make sure its pointing to Plug one. Remember the flywheel does 2 rotations to every one on the crank. So there is TDC up and down.. You want to make sure you are TDC on Plug 1...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jason kiDD &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">With everything set TDC remember to check the distributor as well and make sure its pointing to Plug one. Remember the flywheel does 2 rotations to every one on the crank. So there is TDC up and down.. You want to make sure you are TDC on Plug 1...

</TD></TR></TABLE>

I think you meant to say that the crank does 2 rotations to the cam gears one rotation. TDC exhaust stroke cyl 1 is with the arrows pointed down...I know I didnt do that wrong.

After all, the car started right up, but didnt idle well and with a small rev to 1200 or so it was easy to tell something wasnt right. After I get off school I'm going to redo the balancer shafts since I'm pretty sure I had them wrong the first time, and start 'er back up and see what the deal is.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 4bidden &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm pretty damn sure I put the balancer belt on wrong, so that could cause the whole thing (I'm hoping). Because I know how to set TDC, and its right on...and I've done this thing twice now in the past week with the same result. I had my buddy take a picture of his cam gears while at TDC and they look the exact same as mine.

I'll redo the balancer belt later today after school and see if it fixed anything.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Forget about it. Wrong balancer belt install will NOT make any engine pinging or anything else. If you install it wrong way, it will only make the engine vibrate, nothing else. Couldn;t you have the old timing belt skipped one or more teeth and then made the timing setting? So now whet everything is TDC the timing is off?

 

Come on you guys, the old timing belt has nothing to do with the current timing. Timing is set with the cam gears (pointing to each other as you have done in the pic)and the Crank set at the marker (which appears to be at TDC looking at the flywheel). Just to double check, I would suggest you look at the marking on the block by the crank shaft.

From what I see in the picture, it looks like you have the timing set perfectly.

 

Seriously... all the marks look right, so is it possible that the timing was off to begin with? show a picture of the distributor position.

 

96 right? Should be OBD-II? how can the ignition timing really be off since the dis cap can't be (or so I've read) moved, and the ECU will adjust it electronically?

Is it possible the manual tensioner is shot allow the belt to slack up? Highly doubtful, but damn.. what else could be going on? F'ed ECU?

 

The car is a 92 Si with a 94 H22A swap.

I know the general position of the distributor when its at 15 degrees, and mine looks way retarded, but still shows 15degrees. The distributor was NOT removed at any time during the timing belt install.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by petrv &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Forget about it. Wrong balancer belt install will NOT make any engine pinging or anything else.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Are you positive? The pinging is gone. It was there due to the ignition timing somehow jumping up to 23ish degrees I'd guess after the install. I got a light and put it back to 15degrees, but like I said, my distributor looks really retarded now.

Curious....just how far off would the cam timing have to be to bend some valves?

 

now the only thing to make sure is that you are linning up the TDC mark and not the TIMMING mark on the fly wheel. If you did that that would be why you are only able to get that much of timming out of it

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Quiklude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">now the only thing to make sure is that you are linning up the TDC mark and not the TIMMING mark on the fly wheel. If you did that that would be why you are only able to get that much of timming out of it</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yea, its the TDC mark, I'm positive. I know what the 3 timing marks look like, and they're a little ways around from that mark in the picture. I sware I did the whole thing correct, I'm not a newbie, but something isnt right. I'll take a vid later with sound after I at least redo the balancer belt.

 

i just went thru the same mess but the problam was in the balance shaft belt