help! rebuilt but no fire

has spark but wont run

i overhauled my engine by myself so i used the book to help guide it was my first. went to start and it has spark, sounds like it wants to go but just wont. a friend told me it may be the timing that i need a special tool for to set. when i was putting the motor back together i asked a shop around here who was referred to me that supposedly is very knowledgable about sc,s they told me it wasn't necassary. i think they are full of **** now. before i rip apart again does anybody think this may be the problem.

How about a detailed description? We can't read your mind. Trying to troubleshoot something sight-unseen is hard enough.

Jeff

Check ALL of your Grounds from the eng. mounts to the frame and such..This is a pretty common oversight...

But like Jeff said...Need much more info to give you some usefull feedback you can use to get the car running...


Brad

more info

J57ltr said:

How about a detailed description? We can't read your mind. Trying to troubleshoot something sight-unseen is hard enough.

Jeff

Click to expand...

the car has spark and sounds like its trying to fire
was told it may be the timing need special tool from snap on
a shop told me it was not necassary when i was rebuilding so this is the only thing not followed in book
need more info? ask me some questions that might help you

I just got mine back together and got it up and running. As for not setting the cam sensor, that's bull you got to set it. While mine was with out the balancer pulley and it also didn't have the plastic covers over the crank sensor, you can see a pointer sticking straight off the front of the timing cover. This pointer is on the passenger side of the cover. You will need to make sure that the groove in the balancer is lined up with this pointer while it is going past top dead center. This will put the engine at 26 degrees after top dead center of the #1 cylinder compression stroke. Remove the sensor from the shaft and look at the synchronizer vane(half round slot in the metal ring) in the top of the synchronizer base. The half round side that is sticking up should be on the passenger side. Now, the centerline that is made by the area were the high and low sides of the synchronizer vane meet, should be 30 degrees counterclockwise from the face of the block. The special tool aligns the vane up with the notch on the base, I didn't use this tool. I just held it in line by hand. When you get the base back in the timing cover, the vane should line up with the base notch, and they must both be 30 degrees from the face of the block. You must get it close as possible because you only get 6 degrees of error to play with. Then angled cut of the gear on the cam will cause the vane to turn as it goes down, if this puts you out of the 30 degrees, pull it back out and turn it the direction it needs to go to make it right. The cam sensor controls the injectors (if I am not wronge) and if it isn't set right, your injectors aren't in sync with the engine.

Unplug the cam sensor and crank it a few times. It should take about 3 tries to get the engine to fire. Using the tool is the easy way, but you don't absolutly have to have it. You can do a search for setting the scam shaft position sensor.

Jeff