the legend of Rock continues.. Travis, i can smell a haiku incoming.

Well, Rock. You will be the MOST experienced wrench here shortly.
Best of luck buddy.

 

Rock's head is now at the machine shop... We'll see what they say.

 

what will happen first?

Rock gives up and moves away from the porsche brand...

The porsche curse on him breaks..
?

 

Jeez.. what about the car??

 

Worth noting, if you want to find out whether the head is the problem, rotate the crank 90* from TDC, so that all of the pistons are at the mid-point in their travel, then you can freely rotate the cam without touching any pistons.
If need be, remove the timing belt before doing this.

Also, rotating the engine backwards will not put it out of time. Not if your timing belt has normal tension on it. Rotating the engine by using the cam is another story....

 

rotating the engine b/w ..I understood it to allow slack in the belt which in turn will allow the belt to turn on cam pulley and knock timing off. so, what say you to that? will it upset timing? I think so, now if all covers are off the front of the engine and you can keep an eye on the belt tension I would say you might get away with turning it slowly......keeping just enough tension to keep it from slipping over the grooves on the cam pulley. In advance of being corrected, I could and have been wrong many times!!

 

If the belt is adjusted properly you can spin at backward all day and no damage will occur. However, if you are setting the tension and the idler is loose do not turn backward more than 10 degrees.