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I recently purchased a 96 Accord 4 cylinder F22B2 automatic showing about 172K miles on the odometer. The seller said that the car had been flat towed behind her parents RV for much of that, and figured actual mileage on the engine to be about 72K. I have no maintenance history to work with. Car ran wonderful, the overall condition of the interior (still had factory floor mats in very good condition) suggests that her mileage claims were true.
Last weekend, I parked the car to do some work on it. Changed the oil, and oil filter, as well as the oil pressure switch, and then the drivers side front wheel bearing. The bearing was a beast, and took me a few days working a couple of hours at a time to finish. I started the work Saturday morning, and finished up Monday morning. When I was done, I let the car down, filled up the oil, and cranked it up, but it wouldn’t start. I didn’t hear anything really unusual, no nasty noises from the engine.
I went through checking for spark, and fuel, making sure the injectors had power, and ground pulse. All checked out good. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find the timing marks with the timing light, so I became suspicious of the timing belt.
This morning, I pulled the upper cover, and rotated the engine until the cam marks lined up. The belt is intact, and the cam turns with the crank, however when the cam was lined up, the timing marks on the crank pulley were no where to be seen. I continued to rotate the engine until the timing marks came into position, at that point the word “UP” on the cam gear was pointing nearly straight down.
Since the engine was running fine when I parked it, I have to assume that the timing belt skipped while I was cranking it to start it back up. So, my questions are:
1) Is there any chance that I haven’t screwed up the valves?
2) If there is a chance that they are ok, what is the path forward from here? Is there a relatively easy way to check, or do I just put a timing set on it and hope for the best?
Thanks in advance for any / all help / advice!
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It’s possible you need to rotate the engine another 180º. The marks will only line up every other revolution of the crank. Given that the belt is intact, you may be looking at another issue.
It’s possible it’s flooded. Pull the plugs and see if they’re wet with fuel.
This article I wrote has all the info you need on solving no starts.
http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/solving-automotive-no-start-problems
As for the bearing, it’s very similar to this.
Good luck and please keep us posted on your progress.
I took the crank through a full 360 degrees, when TDC mark on the crank pulley lines up, the cam is off by approximately 4 to 5 teeth, or it is off by nearly 180 degrees, so I saw it at both TDC of compression, and TDC of exhaust.
Before I dug into the cam timing, I though I had flooded it. I pulled the main relay, and cranked the hell out of it, then plugged the main relay back in. I got it to cough once, and then nothing. I pulled the plugs, they did smell of fuel, but they weren’t wet with it. I used a small magnetic parts tool to probe the cylinders, it didn’t come back wet either.
The cam timing / timing belt was pretty much the end of my troubleshooting. I first checked spark, then fuel pump priming, resoldered the main relay as that is such a common problem. I verified good fuel pressure at the fuel rail, and I then pulled an injector plug, and verified reference voltage, and injector pulse. I even tried starting it on a squirt of starting spray, which also failed to produce anything.
I can post up some pictures tomorrow, but I am pretty certain of the mechanical timing being off. I am also certain it was not that way when I shut the car down, as the engine was running smoothly, so it pretty well had to have happened when I was trying to start it after the bearing job was done.
After double checking all of my work, and taking a shot at the crank pulley bold with my impact gun (fail fail fail) I decided that November was not the time of year to be messing around with a job like this outside in New York. I had the car towed into a nearby, trusted mechanic a week ago. I just called now, looks like the head honcho there was working on it, but he’s out of the shop until later tonight, and no one else knows exactly where things stand, so I’ll call back later, and hopefully have some kind of update here shortly.
I’ve heard back from my mechanic. Indeed the timing belt had jumped teeth, approximately 5. Luckily, no damage was done to the valves. He has had the engine running, and says it runs fine.
He also says that the timing belt had been replaced at some point in the past. The problem apparently is that one of the bolts for the tensioner was sheered off, perhaps when the belt was replaced, or maybe something that happened later. Eventually, the tensioner slipped, and let the belt slacken up, and then the belt skipped teeth.
The biggest problem now I guess is that there is a broken bolt in the aluminum oil pump housing. Looks like the plan of attack is to replace the oil pump, new timing set with tensioners, and water pump, and put it all back together. Gonna cost me a few pennies, but a lot better than having bent valves!
Yes, that is the plan.
It has gotten pretty cold up here in New York the past week or so. I have no interest in going that far inside my engine working outside in 30 degree weather. The mechanic will install a new oil pump, then do the timing belts, water pump, and tensioners, and I should be good for another 90k miles 🙂
[quote=”Tomh” post=153337]Yes, that is the plan.
It has gotten pretty cold up here in New York the past week or so. I have no interest in going that far inside my engine working outside in 30 degree weather. The mechanic will install a new oil pump, then do the timing belts, water pump, and tensioners, and I should be good for another 90k miles :)[/quote]
Sounds like a plan. Keep us posted how it all goes. 🙂
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