Head Gasket... Or not.. Dammit.

[jackfrost1031]

So I posted a month or two about what I, and others, had thought was a blown head gasket.

I tore the heads off and replaced the gaskets, and then I get it all back together last night, and....

no fucking power. I cannot get the car to move more than 10 ft without stalling, it idles fine for about 30seconds, and has horrible exhaust smoke, very "carbureted" smelling. My dad thinks i could be valve timing, but I was very careful about putting the belt on, and everything was aligned as best as I could tell (everything was 8 notches off). So I"m between a rock and a hard place, 2 camrys that don't run. I have another car that I bought in the mean time to driver. It has low (88k) miles on it so I'm not worried about anything messing up on it except for maybe a clutch.

So, what does anyone think could be up? I really don't know where to go, since I have no diagnosis experience.

[Calvin327]

Could be that the spark plug wires are shot and oil is leaking into the chamber. Happened to me once on a fucking mountain, when that happened my shit had no power at all. Could barely move the car. Try looking into that and replace the spark plugs and wires and clean out the cylinders. It won't hurt to try that.

Calvin

[Toysrme]

Same thing happened to my 3vz-fe when I rebuilt mine from a DIY head gasket / port and polish job.

33% was from blocking my EGR, and having more than one exhaust leak
33% was misc. lubricants i coated parts with for safety burning off (by design)
33% was misc stuff simply burning... (Running on 4 cly for a couple days waiting on plug wires probably killed this old cat. Who needs it anyways, after 12.5 years, it was worthless anyways hah!)



Did you replace the valve stem sealls, or damage the head gasket/stem seals in any way?
Valve timing can do very funny things. But it will not cause any misc. oil burning no matter what it is.
Make sure you have all of your vacuum lines on, such as the PCV line, and any other "breather" type lines from the heads. Otherwise you're just venting that.
Definately, you'll want to check the distributor timing... It doesn't take huge of retard to affect, or even take the top and middle of your rpm range out completely. That will also cause a very shitty idle.


Give the smoke a few days if you're exhaust isn't leaking, and you're sure the head gasket/valve stem seals are not leaking, it should pass. Also... If you run the motor and it misses, all that fuel is thrown into the exhaust, where it will produce a thick white smoke, and more than likely some of which is igniting in the tail-pipe. That will give an absilutely horrid smell.






Most importantly, when the motor is cranking/running, what does it sound like if you break it down real slow for us.

[jackfrost1031]

Brand new plug wires are on it, and it sounds normal cranking. It has that usual noise cranking without plugs and it sounds pretty routine when it's idling. I checked compression in No2 cylinder just because it was easy and I got about 140ish, but I didn't check any others.

I'll giver more info when I check on the car, it's too cold tonight

I did drop a head, but it was on a soft linolem floor and it didn't hit that hard or fall that far

[Toysrme]

I did drop a head, but it was on a soft linolem floor

Don't worry, I dropped mine in the driveway, and took a 6lb sledge to one side to knock an inconciquencial bolt out. (stripped and I didn't feel like drilling)

It's amazing how the tolerances work on a car sized (or larger) motor. You're lead to believe that there absilutly *has* to be minute precision maintained everywhere when nothing could be farther from the trueth. Granted, anyone could sit and name a few dozen specs that *must* be correct, but there are twice as many that have tons of "play room".
Take the intake tract and small scratching on a valve for example.

Don't worry about warpage unless you really did run the motor way hot.

btw what motor are you working on? I'm guessing a 2vz-fe?

[jackfrost1031]

Yeah, in my 88.

[jackfrost1031]

I checked everything under the hood and found a line or two misconnected, but it still will not idle for more than 20 seconds.

I'm going to try ignition timing today, any other ideas?

[fredk]

put a timing lite on it

[Toysrme]

Yeah, let us know how it goes. btw if you have any loud ticking, it's the lifters not ahving enough oil on them. Just figure out which set of valves it is, pop off the cover, and add another quart of oil all over the camshaft<s>, but the majority of it let it just drip and run onto the lifters.


Replace and problem solved! Just be sure that once the car is running correctly, you get rid of that extra quart of oil. I'm up to around 8 quarts in mine now ROTFLMAO!

[jackfrost1031]

Well, I tried timing light, but I couldn't really see the notch ont he pulley, so that didn't really help. I moved the distributor a little and now it will idle for 1-1.5 minutes. I also pulled the front plugs to try and check compresssion, but my tester is borked. I noticed oil on plugs 2 and 4, and 6 was very black and sooty on the contact. If I'm burning oil, what do I need to try?

[fredk]

well, if ya couldnt see a notch near the scale, it sounds like its real retarded, be sure its #1 cylinder, get something like white out and find the notch on the crank pulley and mark it, try the lite again, the mess on the plugs is because its real rich, did it ever burn alot of oil before you took it apart? Check this too, look at the big intake hose between the mass air and the throttle body real good, be sure you didnt fold it on the ends and for cracks and loose clamps where it can get air through it anywhere but through the mass air

[Toysrme]

And be sure you jumper E1 and TE1 in the diag. port. Otherwise the timing will bounce around like a bitch and it won't make any since.

[jackfrost1031]

I had no clue about jumpering the ports, thanks.

[JetspeedCamry]

When you jump TE1 and E1, what exactly are you doing? Why does the timing not bounce around? I know it's in LIMP mode but what exactly does that mean?

[userlain]

jackfrost, how does the oil look?