Rebuilt motor won't start. If you feel you're intelligent with cars, help me out...

[nightspeed87]

( Its a little long but bear with me here. )

Ok to try to make a long story short, I rebuilt a 6bolt engine to drop in my car.
The engine had about everything replaced on it except the crank shaft ( got new bearings though) And the balance shafts were removed..

We dropped the engine in the car last weekend... Unfortunantly while we were still working on it and the hood was off it started suddenly pouring down rain, and the sparkplugs werent in the holes yet, but we quickly tarped it and threw the hood on top.

I know that water did get in there though.
The next day after everything was connected, we manually check it, and my engine builder
said he had the timing dead on. He tried to blow out some of the water out the engine with the compression stroke and the plugs not in the holes I believe.

Put oil, tried to crank, didnt crank, felt like starting an engine with spark plug wires in wrong locations. I took off the cas and turned it 180 degrees ( the only other way it can go ) This time it cranked, but cranked rough and sounded funny.
We turned it off like 3 seconds later, drained oil and the oil was milky and grayish.
( From the rain obviously since theres no way I have a blown head gasket on that new engine ) Drained, refilled, Cranked again. Let it run for like 5 more seconds ( still sounding funny ) turned off again. Drained oil, this time the oil looked regular, just had small shavings hear and there ( the size of sand particles and there wasnt many, they were break in shavings obviously ) As far as the engine sounding funny, there wasnt anything internally colliding because we manually cranked it over two or three times before starting it. But the engines funny sounds were coming from the head area. none the less, and it was running rough, we are concluding two things...

The funny sound possibly was because we didnt run it long enough to allow oil to circulate up into the head ( new head/ oil pump/ everything else.. ) Had the oil cap off when we started it and I didnt see any oil up there, yet we did lubricate all the parts while building engine. ( cant remember what we used. ) Maybe I shouldve ran it longer to see if noise went away as oil rose... Unfortunantly forgot to hook up oil sending unit so we couldnt see where the pressure was at. We dropped the oil pan after the 2nd crank and the oil looked normal still and didnt see anything abnormal.

Then we was considering the timing being slightly off causing it to run rough... The timing belt felt a little looser than it shouldve been,( we did replace tensioner though? ) but not loose enough were I thought itd pop off or anything... Not sure... Any ideas?

( This probably wont matter but, it has 2g pistons in it... And dont ask me why, long story; but it has n/t 4g63 camshafts in it )

 

[nightspeed87]

i have no idea since i didnt do it, I dont know what he did. ima call you about that,
but as far as the backinplate situation I still have to make SURE he did change out the plates for the right one. The last I heard from him was he had it ready to fire but wasnt going to fire it yet until he figured out more on the backingplate thing and made sure of his timing and what not, and thats the last I heard.

 

[talonracn49]

"Unfortuantly I forgot to line it up the 1st piston to top dead center the first time when we put everything on ( guess that was completely necessary huh. ) yet when we manually rotated the crankshaft with a breaker bar it rotated smoothly and didnt sound like nothing was touching.?"

Theres your problem. The reason you could move it with the breaker bar is because you did not have oil pressure to pump up the lifters, so the valves were not opening all the way -- so they did not get in the way of the pistons. As soon as you cranked it and it got oil pressure, voila more lift and bam theres the piston hitting the valve.

These engines are very picky about their mechanical timing. You will probably have to put the belt on a couple of times to get everything exactly right -- and you want it EXACTLY right -- this crap is expensive, take your time and make CERTAIN!

Good luck with things -- read the vfaq and print the directions for timing belt installs -- that way you know you are 100% right.

 

[nightspeed87]

a wiseman reffered me to something called "CAPS" and he said thats where you look up part numbers and what not to verify that part numbers for the backinplates are different from 6bolt to 7bolt, which Im sure they are. Has anyone every used caps here?

 

[Black Venom]

Yes used Caps, and I have it.

 

[nightspeed87]

Yes used Caps, and I have it.

Im sure your at work still but think when you get the chance you could try to find out if the backing plates from 6bolt to 7bolt have different numbers, and maybe even n/t might have a different number ( which I doubt. )
Im still at hcc but im about to be headed out to work now so ill hit you up later.

 

[Black Venom]

Oh and the illustration on vfaq, clearly shows a difference in the timing mark location between the two plates.

 

[nightspeed87]

Ok listen... New news, we checked the backingplate last night which was indeed a 6bolt and it was on right. We redid the timing and the timing was perfect... We rotated it by hand with a breaker bar for like 6 revolutions. Seemed ok. We pulled out the mpi fuse and bumped it like 5 or 6 times.... Still seemed ok.... Was ready to fire, cranked it for real this time......... Heard a snarl and a nasty mechanical sound. Shut off instanteously , We were like what the ####.
We rotated it again by hand ( which was much harder this time for some reason ) and set it to where the dowel pins were facing upwards, well some how the intake dowel pin wasnt no longer lined up with the exhaust down pin. The exhaust was at 12 o clock while the intake had shifted to more like 10 O clock. HOW!!!!????? That SHOULDNT move. And the thing is, the first time we went thru this it was the intake side obviously that messed up because half the intake valves were bent, and none exhaust, therefore it has to do with the intake cam side.
The timing jumped obviously but I dont see how mechanically the gear shifted. Now after a lot of cursing and thinking we concluded that somehow the cam caps on the intake side arent right and for whatever reason they are seizing/ slowing up the intake cam making it rotate differently from the exhaust cam and that COULD be my problem the whole time namely since we definitly had the correct backingplate and correct timing.
Does this sound like the problem to you, that some moron put the wrong/ wrong order - cam caps?
Because at this point i cant even think any more.
I have a n/t head laying around that i was about to resort to throw on there, but my friend (BlackVenom^) told me the n/t exhaust valves arent sodium filled or some shit meaning they possibly cant withstand as much as the turbo exhaust valves, but then he said it might not make as much difference. Also my turbo head is all ported/ 4angle valve job / all new valve train; that wouldve all been a waist of money if I used the n/t head so this sucks.

 

[Black Venom]

Alright I got things wrong, Sodium filled Exhaust valves were in the Evo. I can't definitively say what differences the turbo and N/A exhaust valves have.

 

[nightspeed87]

Alright I got things wrong, Sodium filled Exhaust valves were in the Evo. I can't definitively say what differences the turbo and N/A exhaust valves have.

ok well maybe Ill be ok . I havent heard ppl having a problem using n/t heads yet.
Well perhaps that will be one less thing to worry about when we tackle this situation.