Hi all,
Here's a tricky one. Just hoping for some brainstorming type ideas. I have a 1990 Legacy GX (New Zealand new model, if that matters). The clutch was s lipping and the cam belt was due for replacement, and the engine bay was pr etty mucky, so I decided to pull the engine out, do the clutch and belt, an d clean (pressure wash) the engine bay. None of that was a big problem, I'v e done a lot of clutches and cam belts with no problems, though it has been a long time since I last did that. On reassembling and re-fitting the engi ne, it won't start. I've checked everything I can think of, multiple times, and I've run out of ideas.
Behaviour - engine turns over OK, and occasionally pops, fires, kicks back etc. Never really gets close to running.
Things I've checked:
- Cam belt seems OK. This is the SOHC engine, not too hard to verify. The c rank and cam position indicators seem OK, and the new cam belt's marks also look OK, so I don't think I got it wrong initially or that it's slipped. T he belt was marked EJ18 when it arrived, but I expect that's fine (I know t he EJ20 and EJ22 SOHC belts are the same).
- It has spark (checked with the plugs out of the engine)
- It has fuel (externally at least - has flow out of the return, though I c an't easily check the regulated pressure)
- If I give it a bit of engine start while it's turning over, it makes no d ifference, suggesting either that there's something pretty fatal wrong with it, or it's too rich/flooded.
- If I put my hand over the throttle body intake while cranking it, there's very little (almost no) vacuum. I wouldn't have thought that was normal, b ut I've never tried that before on one of these.
- Compression sounds fairly even.
So - any ideas?