flyguy

OK... this is based on my phone conversation with Porshhh951, so there might be a few discrepancies that he'll correct later on.

As you may have see, we replaced the HG, and had a few snafu's along the way that were fairly easy to fix.

unfortunately, the other night, when we had everything ready to go again, the car was briefly started (on the first try), turned off, taken off Jacks, and then started again.

upon the second start, the engine was running rough, and shut down quickly. The next day, P951 tried to start the car to no avail. apparently the starter made a loud noise and started free spinning. and the engine does not turn over anymore.

my suggestion was to turn the crank by the crankshaft with a ratchet, and make sure the belts were all lined up... well, they werent. They were when I left the night before, but not anymore

NONE OF THEM WERE LINED UP. When the crank showed "OT", neither the timing, nor the balance shaft belts lined up... tried lining the timing belt to it's 'tdc' mark, and the balance belts were still not lined up.

my first impression of what's going on is that for some reason the flywheel came loose from the crankshaft. Is this possible?

I find it hard to believe that both belts and the TDC mark are completely off and the engine is still able to turn by the crank / ratchet. normally, I dont think the crank would turn easily if the valves were in the way of the cylinders.

Is this something where we're going to have to remove the cam tower again?

Again, I haven;t seen this yet, so this is based off of what I'v heard on the phone. I'm pretty stumped at this point and open to suggestion.

Thanks in advance,
Ian

(acting on behalf of Porshhh951)

Sam Lin

You should never have to remove the cam tower??

Sam

Jeremy Himsel

Ian,

I had a brief chat with John about this and you weren't lining up the OT mark properly. There is a line about 2mm's above the OT in the flywheel. This line must line up exactly with the pointer that is also visible in the window. Get these two lined up and then check your belt marks. There is a misconception out there that as long as you can see the OT in the window that you're at TDC. if the marks on the flywheel are off by a couple of MM's is represents a tooth on the cam gear or more. The flywheel marks alignments are very critical.

If the flywheel came loose, you'd know it.

Magown

Flywheel came loose, lol, I'd love to see pictures of that.

Tom M'Guinn

How far off are they? It is not that hard to be off by a tooth or two (or three) if you do turn the motor my hand after tensioning to make sure everything is still lined up. If the motor still turns smoothly by hand (which I would not check until the belts are aligned), then I'm guessing the starter needs replacing and the belts need to be corrected (fingers crossed for no valve-piston contact).

944Ecology

I have seen cases where the sprocket on the front of the crankshaft has had a damaged keyway and allowed it to rotate on the crank.

It generally results in the timing jumping all over the place, especially the balance shafts, since they turn at twice the speed of the crank. Of course, the opposite is true for the camshaft, since it turns at half the speed.

gb

porshhhh951

hey tom they are off by like 5-6 teeth. I am stumped at this point. How do we get everything to line up again without removing the cam tower. Ian does know how to do this and I sure as heck don't. Hey jermey we might be calling you in a little while. I might let you explain it to Ian and he might be better eqipped to understand. They aren't just a tooth or two off though they are way off. I am hoping that it is indeed the starter

As I talked to jeremey I was going to put everything back aligned and see if it would crank if not then it was starter time. Unfortunately when I tried to get everything back aligned I found out nothing is aligned. So I am a little stumped because Ian didn't know how to align everything without taken off the cam tower. How do we do this???


jermey is it okay if we call you tonight?

Tom M'Guinn

Where is the engine now? If it is at TDC #1, then backing it up (Counterclockwise) 90 degrees or so, should bring all the pistons to the mid-bore point -- you can confirm that with wooden dowls in the spark plug holes to watch where the pistons are. Once all the pistons are out of the way, you can turn the cam (with the belt off!) to line it up to the TDC #1 spot, and then turn the motor back to TDC #1. The balance shafts are no problem -- just pull the belt and align the balance shafts once everything else is lined up. I'd do a compression check once it is together to see if you bent valves with the cam out of time -- could explain the stripped starter. The point about a stripped (or forgetten?) woodruf key is worth investigating, if you are sure you lined everything up the first time and tensioned the belts so they could not jump teeth.

Danno

"hey tom they are off by like 5-6 teeth. I am stumped at this point. How do we get everything to line up again without removing the cam tower. Ian does know how to do this and I sure as heck don't. "

Set the engine to TDC by hand. I hate using the OT mark because you can't see it that well and people always seem to not line it up with the pointer-mark correctly. I prefer much more lining up the channel on the flywheel with U-opening on the bell-housing on the bottom.

Then loosen the timing-belt and pull it off the cam-gear. Use a big wrench to rotate the cam 5-6 teeth in the right direction. While you're there, pull off the distributor rotor and make sure the bolt underneath is tight. Then pull the belt back onto the cam-gear. Quickly adjust tension in the ball-park and rotate the engine 2x and verify that the mark on the cam-gear lines up with the distributor housing when the engine is at TDC again.

Same process for balance-shaft belt & pulleys. The marks to line up with the other plastic housing is actually on the rear flange of the pulleys.

Mark-87-951

anyone got a good picture of the are danno is referring to?

F18Rep

Danno is right (as always) forget about the marker window near the sensor, it is nothing but trouble. Just use the little one below - it is directly beneath the flywheel. Get a good eyeball looking up throuth that tiny little hole and then slowly racthet the the crank around. Slowly because a little red mark wil fly right by. Park the crank with that mark showing. This the perfect time to install the flywheel lock and just leave it installed till the belts are tensioned. Here's a pic... Good luck, bruce

Dal Heger

Red mark???? It's just a cutout in the flywheel, unless you put some red paint on it.



Dal.

84black944

I had a similar problem but not so serious with my 951 as I have been working on it recently i found out when i lined up the cam tower mark with tdc and checked the crank mark and they were both tdc i found the balance shaft mark was not tdc?

porshhhh951

wow old thread. Thankgod everything is well now with my new head.