HELP! - 33 Series 3 16v Cambelt Timing Problem

I'm in an interesting sitch - having rebuilt my 16v 33 engine I've put the engine back in and timed the cams according to the instructions on

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Since then, the engine has runon 1 & 3, but cylinders 2 & 4 won't run.

Now I've thought laterally, then read the instructions several (hundred!) times and then I tried moving the belts around a bit - this afternoon I moved the belt so that, with the 'V' (triangle) lined up in the hole above the engine, the two 'I' marks on the upper cambelt wheel were aligned with the single 'I' on the lower one. (I'd previously had the 2 'deltas' aligned with each other)

I tried the precautionary 'turn engine over with socket on the end of the crankshaft and it stopped turning over due to a mechanical contact. Hmm, - won't try to start it!

So, where do I go from here - can someone please advise me how I achieve the correct timing for cylinders 2 & 4? My car belongs on the road, not jacked up!

I assume the 'V' (triangle) on the flywheel is the one that is about 20 degrees from the TDC indicator on the flywheel, and when timing the belts originally, I timed 1 & 3 and then turned from the TDC mark to the 'V' mark and then set the timing for 2 & 4. Should I have turned the engine over 380 degrees or so to align it that way?

Many thanks

Adam H

Reply to
Rev. Alfa Adam
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Sounds like you may have the HT leads on wrong. (DAMHIKIJD,OK) One pair need to be crossed over, and I think it's 2 and 4

HTH

Reply to
Catman

my book says that the marks on lh and rh bank are different, line up the tdc mark (two v marks aligned) lh bank has two v marks which align rh bank has two marks on upper wheel which have the single mark on the lower wheel aligned with the gap between them.

HTH

MrCheerful

Reply to
MrCheerful

Tried that last week, no difference.....

Reply to
Rev. Alfa Adam

Arse.

Back to the basics then, fuel, compression and spark :(

Reply to
Catman

All OK, checked them last week. (all pistons in engine.....)

Reply to
Rev. Alfa Adam

Always a good start :) I'm stumped then mate, sorry.

Reply to
Catman

I've had this on a straight four.

The engine was rough as heck, naturally.

We tried moving the leads round because we weren't entirely sure which was "1" even though we knew the order was 1-3-2-4 (as I recall) because that was stamped on the engine. Logically, we reasoned it didn't matter which was 1 so long as we tried all four possible positions.

We got two cylinders firing in two positions, and none on the other two positions.

After some experimenting with wondering if it was anticlockwise, we just put the leads on in an order which made a difference, i.e. it was not to hard to tell when a cylinder was firing, so try each of the four leads on plug one until that was firing, then move on to find which lead then made cylinder two fire. I suppose it is obvious that if none of the remaining three work, that's not the problem.

Ended up with a firing order of 1-4-2-3 or something like that, with 1 in the opposite position to what it actually ought to have been. Thing was, the engine was firing on all four so that was good enough not to care if it was "wrong".

Classic amateur bodging, but when you've just swapped an engine and it's got dark and there's nothing but torchlight to work with, you don't really care to take it all apart again.

If you want to do the job properly instead, the issue we had was caused by the distributor being in the wrong way around and consequently TDC being set to the end of the exhaust stroke rather than the induction stroke, what with it being a four stroke. Hence moving things around to "wrong" positions found out where the sparks ought to be at each point in the cycle.

Might be something completely different. My boxer suffered horrifically from oil burning and if you normally park up hill, I can imagine the rear two cylinders are badly fouled with oil. I used to run mine 2 mill below the minimum level on the dipstick. But that engine never had a spark issue, very nice engine too. Outlasted the car.

Note this won't work for some cars, my Ford has a "wasted spark" and fires around TDC on both strokes. Thinking about it, that maybe means order is much less important as it ought to work in a variety of positions, not just one correct one.

Reply to
antispam

Firing order isn't that important on a four cylinder. A mis-timed spark is so far out of place that it's simply ignored. An engine runs much rougher with a small timing variation between cylinders (as result from a worn distributor) than a missing cylinder. At idle and without a load, a four-pot runs fairly happily on two. You;ll notice it, but it doesn't sound like it's about to fall apart.

If you have an eight, then you can swap cylinders closely enough to cause a mis-timed firing that actually fires. These sound like a bag of hammers and you'll notice it immediately. Swapping other cylinders just gives rise to a non-firing cylinder.

-- Die Gotterspammerung - Junkmail of the Gods

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Forget timing marks. Go back to basics. All road engines run cams that reach full lift on the inlet cam at approx 110 degrees ATDC. Check the firing order - presumably 1,3,4,2. Bring cylinder 1 to 110deg ATDC and check that the inlet lobe is at full lift with a dial gauge. If not turn 360 degrees and recheck in case you were previously on a firing stroke.

Turn the engine through 180 degrees, go to the next firing cylinder on the opposite bank. This cylinder should now be at 110 deg ATDC on its inlet cycle. If you find that cam is wildly out then by bringing it to where it should be you'll hopefully then spot some timing marks close to alignment and you can work from there.

Dave Baker - Puma Race Engines

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I'm not at all sure why women like men. We're argumentative, childish, unsociable and extremely unappealing naked. I'm quite grateful they do though.

Reply to
Dave Baker

Er... That's news to me. When this engine was firing on two, it was barely able to run without a fair bit of throttle and made a real bad noise, pumping out tons of black and grey smoke and all manner of "this ain't right".

That was how we knew. It is a fairly old engine, though.

Reply to
antispam

I don't know what your instructions are, but I'll repeat the ones from my book here. Please note, this is my translation from a dutch book. And this book is not known for it's 100% accuracy.

(1990-1994 16V engine)

- Put cylinder 1 in TDC, end of compression stroke. Line up 'T' mark on flywheel with 'V', distributor points to cyl no. 1.

- Rotate crankshaft aprox 45 degrees right (as seen from driving direction), to prevent hitting the valves.

- Rotate left camshafts (as seen from front) until marks 'I' and 'II' are exactly facing each other.

- Rotate crankshaft back to TDC (line up 'T' and 'V')

- Put on left belt.

- Loosen left tensioner nut to tension the belt. (my book does not say to tighten it again, but I think it meant to as they say to loosen it again later on).

- Rotate crankshaft 45 degrees, to prevent hitting the valves.

- Rotate right camshafts until marks 'I' and 'II' are facing each other.

- Rotate crankshaft back to TDC

- Put on right belt.

- Loosen right tensioner nut. (again, no mention to fasten it again. But I think you must)

- Rotate crankshaft a few turns in normal direction.

- Put cylinder 1 in TDC, end of compression stroke. Line up 'T' on flywheel with 'V'.

- Loosen right tensioner nut and fasten again with 37-46 Nm.

- Rotate crankshaft one revolution, cylinder 1 in TDC again. The 'T' marks on both right camshaft wheels should now exactly facing each other.

- Loosen left tensioner nut and fasten again with 37-46 Nm.

- Rotate crankshaft one revolution, cylinder 1 in TDC. Now check if the camshaft 'T' marks on both sides are facing each other.

Did you put on new tensioners? Always a good idea when changing belts.

Reply to
Stef

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