Am I just stupid? I think I may have totally screwed up

68converted

Member
Nov 19, 2003
772
0
16
Colorado
When I put the motor back together. The bottom end was not pulled apart; just heads, Cam, lifters, rockers, and intake (obviously). When I installed the Cam, I followed the instructions from comp cams to the "T" and everything seemed to be fine. After some electrical garbage the A-team from the forum helped me figure out, it started up just fine. It stinks to high heaven, burns the eyes, garage smells like there is a ton of gas in the exhaust.

So I changed out a bad EGR, and restarted, but it was running really rough. I put a timing gun on it (yes, using the #1 cyl) and I could not see the timing marks. (They were on the opposite side of the balancer??? WTF

I think I have what I thought was TDC on the top of #1's exhaust stroke instead? Is that possible and it would still run?

I pulled the valve cover (flippin PITA), and indeed, the top of the compression stroke puts the timing marks on exact opposite side from where it should be.:shrug:

How the heck would the car run like that, and pretty powerful at that????
 
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It didn't run rough. It actually drove really nice, had a loapey idle (from the cam). It just smelled really bad. That's when I discovered that the MAF sensor was bad. I replaced it and thought it was best check the distributor to start refining the trouble checklist and to make sure everything was alright. Thats when I discovered that the timing marks were on the opposite side. I seriously remember the first time around that the timing was right on 12*, and that when I put the cam in it was set at 4* initial???

I couldn't sleep thinking that I had pulled a bonehead move and put the timing gun pickup on the wrong wire, but alas, the results were the same.

Where do I go from here?