Well, I recently replaced the headgasket and the timing belt on my GSR. Had no issues for about two months. Yesterday I was driving at about 30mph, car bogged and died. I found out the timing belt skipped. I wasnt really going fast so I was hoping I didnt bent a valve but now that I took the belt off and loosen the rockers to adjust the cams to TDC, the intake cam is hard to rotate. The exhaust cam moves easily. Can I assume I have a bent valve on the intake side? or what else could stop it from rotating easily?

 

A cam that rotates stiff, but rotates all the way around with the same stiffness only says that one or two valves dont have bent valve shafts. An easy way to test for a bent valve is to rotate each cam lobe to, intake valve closed position, cam lobe pointing away from the valve, and check the clearance with your feeler gauge. Which ever one is off is MAYBE bent, remember all the valves may not be close to the same from normal wear but a few thousandths of an inch may be a tell tale sign.

You could have an oil delivery problem and the intake cam is siezed up in the head, you will have to pull the cam to see how the journals look. If you have loosened up the rocker arms to take away the spring tension and the cam is stiff, I am betting on another head or a trip to the machine shop. I believe this is the true reason for the timing belt jumping. GOOD LUCK

 

Thansk for the reply, but it ended up being the distributor. Some how the key that ligns up with the intake cam got all loose and jammed the cam causing it not to spin proper. It was hard to romove the distributor but once it was out the cam was spinning freely.
Thanks for the help anyways.

 

Thanks for posting the root cause of your problem, we will have to add a siezed distributor to the diagnostic list, now its here for the archives.