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No doubt. The butterfly valve changes the intake runners to permit more lower end torque.
The timing belt definitely needed to be addressed though.
Luck had nothing to do with it. 😉
It didn’t look to me like the belt had slipped a tooth. I think the lack of tension caused inconsistent timing that, like you said, triggered the limp mode.
Anyway, all’s well that ends well.
Last week it got too hot to finish on Saturday, and on Sunday it rained all day. So it wasn’t until today that I got to finish putting the car back together.
The extra time let me do more research. Though I never found anything that definitively stated what I needed to do for the actuator, I did find an ETCG video on valve adjustment that showed the top of the intake plenum being taken apart. I think it provided all the explanation I needed. I took mine apart and could see that it was set wrong because the butterfly valves were partially open. So I reset that, cleaned a bit and put that back together.
I also discovered that there is a shaft that fits into the tensioner pulley that had to be removed from the old pulley and installed on the new. I was wondering why the new pulley didn’t seem to adjust terribly easily. With the shaft installed the pulley rotated easily on its pivot point. I reset the tensioner and reinstalled it. All this was after I aligned the crank and camshafts and removed and reinstalled the belt. This time I pulled a it harder and adjusted the cams a tiny bit while installing the belt. Doing that I was finally able to get the belt tight around the water pump. With the tensioner installed and the grenade pin pulled it finally was properly snug all the way around.
I removed the plugs and checked the gap, which seems to be factory correct. With the plugs out the motor rotated easily and the cam and crankshafts remained in alignment. I put the car back together and all seems well. I haven’t road tested it yet, though. I did start it briefly in the driveway and it seemed to run well and smooth.
Hopefully the road test will go without a hiccup this time.
**UPDATE** Took it on a short road test tonight. So far, all is good. I forgot to mention earlier that I also plugged in the code reader. With the battery having been disconnected for a week, all the codes it had before were gone. But on the road trip this time I got no check engine light like the last time. I plan to do more road testing in the morning and to run the code reader to verify nothing is out of the ordinary.
Today I finally got to look at the car again. When I looked at the cam markings through the windows with the crank supposedly set to TDC, it looked like the timing was off quite a bit. So I started taking stuff out to get to the timing belt again. On the plus side it took less than half the time to do the tear down this time than last, so at least I’m getting familiar with the car.
Once the timing belt cover was off and the bottom pulley removed, it actually looked like things were not nearly as far off as I had originally thought. It might be off a tooth. That’s good because before I started it looked to be much further off and I was concerned about potential valve damage.
I think the problem is that I don’t have the tensioner set correctly. Also, there is too much slack around the water pump. I struggled with that when putting the belt on, too, and would welcome suggestions on how to get that area to stay tight.
I also have hunted and hunted and haven’t found anything that talks about the Intake Manifold Tuning actuator at all, let alone provides any explanation for its proper removal and re-installation. So, if anyone has information on that (e.g., a manual page that talks about it), I would appreciate the shared knowledge.
I remain hopeful that once I figure out how to get the slack out and to get the tensioner set properly, and then ensure the bypass valve actuator is set properly, that all will be good. For what it’s worth, the car seemed to start and idle well, and it wasn’t until the test drive that I started having problems.
This is probably why so many builders focus on one make, model, and/or manufacturer. You build familiarity so that you know what works and what doesn’t, which helps avoid mistakes that blow the budget. You also know what the parts you need really cost, so your budget is more realistic from the outset.
I did a modest restoration, and not a conversion, on a car. It started off being a fix and flip and ended up being a “full restoration.” Part of that was because I didn’t assess the car as closely as I should before buying. Part of it was wanting to do the car “right” knowing that I would be selling it once it was finished. I wanted the car to be roadworthy and reliable (which is what you talk about frequently on the Fairmont project). So I engineered fixes to common faults. Not only did that take the car over budget but it also made it take about twice as much time as I originally envisioned.
In the end, time was my friend, as the market for this car was on an upswing and I was able to sell it for pretty much what I had into it…not counting my time. I consider myself lucky, but by the same token, I had an idea of what the maximum sales price would be once the car was completed and worked hard to stay under that number. So, to some extent it is all about discipline.
Where am I going with this? If you want to build a car because you want the experience and want to put what YOU want on the car, then build it however you like and accept that budget really just isn’t a prime motivator. Which is o.k. — if it is your car do with it what you want and make it something you will enjoy.
On the other hand, if you want to get out of it what you put into it (i.e., to sell the finished car), avoid the “exotic” parts and plan your build around who you think the ultimate buyer will be.
That’s my $.02.