Exhaust cam seems not to be moving

[canonize-ryda]

I have been fighting with my car trying to get her started after the rebuild. After checking ecu, battery, cas and so on i have come up with this: My starter isnt giving my car enough to start. That said it struggles to start the car and after installing a spare it does the same thing.

I seem to believe that maybe my valves where bent making it hard to turn over. So i pulled my cover and all the rockers are on and when turning over while cover is off all the valves do what they are supposed to do. I can slightly move the intake cam but he exhaust cam will only move under starter pressure. I cant seem to get it to turn with wrenches on the cams.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Its also appears someone has messed with the cam before as it has a wrench slip spot on the main cam nut thingy.

Thanks

 

[Boostinsideways]

Sounds like your exhaust cam was in correctly timed.

 

[caseyrock]

Sounds like your exhaust cam was in correctly timed.

Damn that sucks, but it sounds like you dropped it in there wrong. Don't keep trying to turn it over, just pull the head off and salvage what's left. Hopefully not all of the valves are bent.

 

[honda_burner]

what (if anything) did you do to the head when you rebuilt your engine?

 

[canonize-ryda]

The head was left stock. And how many teeth in the belt between the marks again?

 

[knochgoon24]

Have you tried pulling the plugs and turning the motor over?

 

[BogusSVO]

Are all the cam tower caps facing the proper way and in the proper order?

You may want to remove the cam caps and look for gaulling of the cap to the cam,lack of oil.

Have you changed, or know if the cams have been changed?

Also I have read on the fourm that some cams may have a larger cam journal size over the common stock, I would assume this was a "factory" repair in some head castings.

 

[canonize-ryda]

Yea i bought this head used and some holes are stripped and i dont know much about caps but they look like they all point to the outside. They were not tourqued and each one was different amounts when removing them. I did notice a little scarring on one but nothing major on the cam journal. This head did run 48 miles and then starting making rattling noises which i thought were the main bearing but now could have been this used head. I might just rebuild me a good head and go from there.

 

[BogusSVO]

look real close at the caps, you will see stamped numbers and letters on the caps, and cast arrows

Front will be where the cam gears are.
on the exhaust cam, the cam caps are marked R1, R2, R3, R4, R5 and the cast arrows should point sort of towards the back of the head and our towards the runner side of the head.

 

[canonize-ryda]

Mine had arrows faces the front side of the car. I haven't noted the number yet but i think they all match except one. i have more caps laying around maybe changing them out would help?

 

[kenuwine4g63]

Mine had arrows faces the front side of the car. I haven't noted the number yet but i think they all match except one. i have more caps laying around maybe changing them out would help?

You need the original caps with the original head. On top of the cam caps you will see (E) for exhaust and (I) for intake. Exhaust will be E5-E1, and intake I5-I1.....E5 is exhaust and the 5th cap. So it goes on the first cap away from the timing belt or passenger side of the motor on the exhaust cam cap. then E4 is next and so forth. Do the same thing with the intake cam caps. Do not use caps from another head they are mili-spec to match the head that it came with. They only go on one way, just make sure you have E5 on exhaust 5 cam cap and so forth.

I had this same problem when building my 95tsi. Dont turn the car over anymore till you fix that or you will end up stripping the teeth off the timing belt causing serious damage.

hope this helps

 

[BogusSVO]

Cam caps are like rod caps and main caps, they have to go to the part they are machined too

You can NOT swap caps from one head to the other, if you do the hwead will have to be align honed/bored!!

The arrows on the INTAKE cam will point towards the driver side, almost the steering wheel.
The arrows on the EXHAUST cam will be pointing towards the passenger headlight

Also, when the caps are in the proper place, if you stand at the passenger tire, the number/letter will look proper.
I1 and E1 Hold the cam seals

 

[SLIDER121]

Make sure you don't over tighten the bolts on the cam towers. If they are to tight the cam won't turn freely, plus you could pull the threads in the head. they are tightened to 15 ft lbs.

 

[MichaelSuch]

I assume you're trying to turn the came with the timing belt on? It may be very hard to do if the lifters are full of oil and you are also trying to turn the crank as well. I would use 1/2 breaker bar on the crank bolt and watch the exhaust cam turn then. You can do a cold compression test just to get an idea if you have bent valves or if you are losing compression somewhere. With bent valves, you will generally turn the engine over much quicker due to loss of compression. But you say it's harder to turn over... It sounds to me like your problem is elsewhere.

 

[canonize-ryda]

Well you may be right. After checking compression and it being 50-80 per cylinder except one cylinder that was a little lower but it still had compression and it was getting hard to turn over due to battery running dead. And yea i did use that starter to take the readings. I know you guys said not to but i cant do it any other way.

Anyways after doing the tests i tryed to cam sprocket again and it slightly moves like the intake cam now. So feeling a little relieved about it i tryed then to turn the crank, only to find that with a 10 inch ratchet i could not move the crank pulley at all. I slowly started to think that maybe something went wrong with the engine rebuild. I did it myself with brand new bearing and rings. I eliminated the balance shafts and now i cant come up with what could have gone wrong.

I am about to just shoot this car in the face after this. Ive spent my entire summer spending all my money on it and i have failed in the rebuild? Maybe i can drain the oil see if it has any flakes and see if i have a bearing seizing up. Sound like a good place to start?

And btw yea i tryed with no plugs same thing and i also checked and all the caps were on the correct way.

 

[MichaelSuch]

Compression is 50-80 per cylinder with zero run time correct? Did you happen to turn over the crank without the head installed? Did it turn over easily? It sounds to me like your starter isn't getting proper voltage and its turning over slowly (could be due to a bad battery, bad grounds, etc). Can you check voltage to the starter using a multimeter? Also check voltage of the battery while cranking. The only things that could've gone wrong during the build that I think would affect this, is overtorquing of main caps and possibly cams caps, clearances being too tight on main bearings, main caps in incorrect order, or incorrect timing. Have you verified proper timing yet? If the starting system checks out fine, I would pull the timing belt and cams so that the valves are fully closed and then attempt to turn over the crank and see how much resistance there is, then you know that there is an issue in the bottom end, but don't go that far without verifying that your getting proper voltage to the starter and your battery is good. I've seen a lot of batterys with good voltage sitting there, but as soon as you crank it drops radically.

 

[canonize-ryda]

I have installed 2 different starters. They both acted the same and i have recharged my battery to max before trying to crank. By hand i cant get the crank pulley to even move. I do believe its in the bottom end.

 

[MichaelSuch]

The next step I would personally take is pulling off the timing belt, removing the cams, and taking out the spark plugs and see how easy it is to turn the crank then. If it's still difficult, pull the pan, and check which way the main caps are facing. Did you happen to check clearance on the bearings during the build with plastigage?

 

[canonize-ryda]

No i have no idea what that is. I just remove old bearing cleaned up crank and caps and replaced with new bearings. Did the same to the piston rings. I cleaned block then eliminated shafts. Put head on and timed it and did all the other put together of it. I put it all back together the way it came out and i even had a spare motor to check to make sure. Everything was torqued down to specs.

I may be anal but taking that top left mount is just almost to much to want to do just for a mount. It got better with a cherry picker but thats about it. Thats why i almost would rather pull the pan first but i guess ill get to taking off the belt and checking into it even further.

Thanks again for all your help guys. At least someone knows what i am going threw .

 

[MichaelSuch]

Without checking clearances it's possible they may have sent you the wrong main bearings and that could be a cause of the problem. I'd almost bet that when you pull off the timing belt and pull the cams the crank itself will still be very difficult to turn.

 

[98spyderboost]

Hate to bring up the battery thing again but as far as what you have noted in this discussion, you still haven't completely eliminated it as an issue. You said it was fully charged. Did it sit unused during your build this summer? A battery can be fully charged and still not produce enough CCA to turn it over... Not to suggest you haven't been thorough but I would at least get the battery tested at your local parts house. Just to make damn sure your not digging back into a freshly built engine for no reason unless you have to. Good luck my friend. I know the pain of a stubborn rebuild/re-install. You'll get it. You just may have to do some stuff over again

 

[tenn-gsx]

He eliminated the battery as an issue when he said that the engine would not rotate at all using a 10 inch breaker bar. He shout be ave to rotate the engine with a breaker bar. Although it would be somewhat difficult with only a 10 inch bar. He needs to pull the timing belt, pull the cams and then try to rotate the crank. If the crank still does not rotate then its time to pull the engine and start over.

 

[bryanwheat]

Did you put the same cap on each rod that came off of the rod when you took it apart? If you mix them up than it will either make the rod too loose or too tight.

 

[mitsu_matt]

Did you size the rings? What size is your bore, has it been honed? What is the measurement of the crank journals, has it been cut? without knowing these before how could you order the correct bearings and rings? Not to mention did you check clearances once you put it back together? Also the main caps need to be in the correct order just like the cam caps.

So many things could be wrong. I would take off the belt and see if the problem is in the head or block.

Lastly why did you pull the bearings and rings?

 

[canonize-ryda]

I pulled all the bearing and replaced with stock bore rings and bearings. I replaced them after a member on here said my rattling noise was a main bearing starting to spin. I think it was my valves hitting the pistons. Like i said i had a spare motor to look at to make sure all caps were in proper location. The bearing kits came with the same bearings i took out i just put them back in the same way they came out. I really think i could just pull the pan and check all the bearing make sure they are okay and slowly start to eliminate witch bearing it was that locked up. I DO NOT want to take the timing belt off. I may sound like a idiot but after timing this engine over 10 times and getting that mount on its almost worse than the entire rebuild to me.

Once again Thanks guys. I hope its not totally lost cause.