I took apart my car and now it won't start

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:38 pm

Well, I haven't been on in a while. (I'm sure there's a couple people happy about that) I finally took 5 days off to swap out the 4spd in my 86gt for the getrag outta my rustbucket 87. I decided to drop the engine so I could fix timing cover and exhaust manifold leaks while I was taking stuff apart. Very long story short, multiple broken manifold bolts, chunks of both heads broke off around 2 of the manifold bolts, headaches, broken finger, more headaches, 3 weeks of begging for rides.

Now everything is finally back together and it won't start.
I have spark, I have fuel, all the grounds seem ok.
I have no compression, on ANY cylinder.
I used the heads off the parts car, it only had 70k on it, it just rotted under a tree in New Hampshire for the last 2 years.
Visual inspection of the valves was excellent, precision straightedge and feeler guage showed all gasket surfaces to be well within usable range and I already overextended my budget by quite a bit so I used the heads without machining after a very thorough cleaning.

I'm hoping that what you guys say about the Chilton's and Haynes is true in this case, and their valve lash adjustment proceedure was wrong. I'm certain I didn't screw anything up with the timing. But I did have a few beers the night I did the valve adjustment, so now that's it's back in the car I'm gonna take apart the top end and readjust the valves.
Questions I could use help with:

How much farther after all lash is removed do I go... Chilton and Hayne both say a full turn and a half after zero lash, most of my mechanic friends say a qurter to a half turn at most.

I've got one friend saying I should remove the lifters and deflate them before I do the adjustment, others saying that they need to be pumped with oil or to pressurize the oil system with 20psi of shop air to simulate oil pressure when I do the adjustment ( I thought this bull as oil will shoot everywhere with the valve covers off).

Lastly, is the procedure in the manuals right at least in which valves to adjust when cyl 1's at tdc and which to adjust with 4 at tdc?

I'm gonna check the factory manual that's on FieroNews, but any real life input would be appreciated. I'll post pics of the finished product soon, nothing of the step by step unfortunately (the soon-to-be Mrs Lucky freaked when I said I was taking our brand new digital camera to the garage).

Boscolingus · Post by **Boscolingus** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:11 pm

yeah, did the same thing years ago with a 350 in my truck-the chiltons book said 1 AND 1/4 turn after zero lash, it was supposed to be 1/4 turn. What happened was that all the valves were down regardless of angle or rotation of the came. Thought I had snapped the cam, crank, etc.... when I started the motor it was turning WAY too easy....

tore it all apart and redid it all, worked bitchen since

p8ntman442 · Post by **p8ntman442** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:47 am

3/4 turn after no lash.

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 5:49 pm

kewl, i'm gonna tear it back down tomorrow.
I did check the spec in the factory manual on fieronews, it also said 1 1/2 after no lash by the way.

Weponhead · Post by **Weponhead** » Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:59 pm

I bet she breathes good .. ARRRRR

Mach10 · Post by **Mach10** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:25 am

I always did Lash + 1/2... Did the 1 1/2 turn, got zero compression, so I assumed the 1 was a typo. :shrug

Motor sounded good afterwards, didn't tap afterwards, but I didn't put more than 10,000km on it before the motor died of unnatural causes (ever had a brand new oil filter--professionally installed--rupture while tossing the car around some deserted roads? Not pretty)

The Dark Side of Will · Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:27 am

Warrantee?

Mach10 · Post by **Mach10** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:54 am

Was trying to get Pennzoil to pay for it; they took the filter, and an oil sample (of what was left) and that was the last I ever heard from them.

I was going through the shop owner at this point.

A week later, I turned up to find out what was going on, and the doors were chained, and I had to get a bailiff to bust out my car.

Eventually I got ahold of the Pennzoil rep on my own, to which I got a dumb look and a "I dunno WTF you're talking about" from the rep :noway

No receipt for the sample, no reference number, therefore no proof.

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 10:11 pm

that sux.

Mine's alive btw. Tore it apart today. Readjusted to 3/4 past no lash, started right up after a little tinkering with the dis. Smells a little rich, and the exhaust wrap is smoking so much i can't tell if the exhaust is all sealed, but it's running and I haven't seen any leaks yet.

I did notice today that my torque strut doesn't line up right. The cv's both appear to be at relatively the same angle to the cradle, and both ball joints only required minor persuasion to align. I saw someone else talking bout this. I swapped the 86 4spd for 87 getrag btw.
I ended up bending the torque strut to engine brackets so it lines up, little heat big mallet, now it fits right, still don't see why it didn't line up if everything else fell into place.

Boscolingus · Post by **Boscolingus** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:06 pm

Torque strut mounted near the starter or the dog bone mounted by the alternator?

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 5:56 pm

torque strut=dog bone
near starter is drive train shock absorber.

The motor mount, tranny mounts and drivetrain shock absorber all fell into place. The engine side of the torque strut bracket was (standing behind the car) 1/2" low and 3/4" to the right of where it should have been. I tried the mounting brackets from both engines, same (mis)alignment either way.

The Dark Side of Will · Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:23 pm

There are 2 sets of holes for trans mounts and two for engine mount. Did you try both?

Boscolingus · Post by **Boscolingus** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:10 pm

There were essentially 5 different lengths of dog bones offered for the V6 Fiero during it's course of production. I never really found out why this was needed, but always had to ask what the hole center distance was back at thye shop whenever someone ordered up a dogbone.

lucky · Post by **lucky** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:31 pm

The Dark Side of Will wrote:There are 2 sets of holes for trans mounts and two for engine mount. Did you try both?

My cradle only had one set of holes for the engine mount. As for the trans, one mount had one set of holes, the other had two sets. It seemed extremely obvious which set of holes to use because with the other set, the cv axles would have been way out of square compared to the cradle.

This is the least of my worries at the moment. I can't get the e-brake working, I'm showing no oil pressure at the guage ( I bought a cheap mechanical guage to hook up instead of the sending unit to verify, but the way the valves are starting to sound I doubt the guage is wrong), and it feels like it has no power. It also backfires at low rpm if you don't accelerate slowly. I think I may have screwed up the timing after all, but no way to be sure because my buddy broke my harmonic balancer while pulling it, and the aftermarket one's timing marks don't line up at all.

I've seen a couple of companies list the OPS as a starter switch/oil pressure sender. If this were true the motor should die when I unplug it, which it doesn't. Is this untrue, or do I have a wiring problem?