B16a Timing issue

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BrokenRex

Member
i just installed an obd1 b16a into my CRX. while the motor was out, i replaced the timing belt and water pump. the arrow on the oil pump lined up perfectly with the line on the crank gear while the two dots on the cam gears also lined up. i turned the engine over a few times then verified all marks were in alignment and tension was correct.

however, my problem is that the crank pulley can rotate like a quarter of an inch with the woodruff key in the slot (i also bought a new key, and still there's this slop.) my old obd0 b16a had this same issue, but i just figured it was from wear and tear. so on to the real problem...

i let the engine warm up, installed a jumper into the ecu, (which i have no check engine lights, pr3 obd1 ecu) and checked the timing, found it was 30degrees advanced. the farthest i could turn the distributor was to 20degrees advanced... that's 20degrees before top dead center. i have a craftsman advance timing light, and i know how to use it before anyone asks. with the knob set at 20degrees, it flashes right on the single white line, with it set to 0degrees, it flashes just to the left of the three timing marks on the pulley.

well the thing is, before i checked the timing, the motor pulled really strong. and once i moved it, it now feels like it's way down on power. like a 20+ hp loss. so my question is, could that slop in the pulley be causing a bad timing reading? because it should have been knocking at 30degrees of base timing, and should still pull strong at 20. but doesn't.

also, if anyone knows offhand how many degrees of timing is one tooth? is it possible that i installed the belt a tooth off of TDC? and if so, would a 30degree base timing be indicative of that?
 
right, but i'm saying that i cant do that. the farthest i can turn it is to 20degrees before the slots in the distributor hit the bolts.
 
you shouldn't have to turn the dizzy to get to 16 dbtdc.. check your crank and cam marks, make sure crank is on the single white line and the cams have the lines level with each other...
 
and they do. physically all the marks line up. i'm talking about actual ignition timing here. i verified before i put the timing covers back on that they were all correct.
 
i'll check it out this sunday, gonna pull it apart again and check out everything again. i'm wondering if my timing light is bad. i wish craftsman still sold their old non-advance units. everyone seems to swear by those. i'll post an update if i find anything out, but in the meantime, if anyone has any other ideas, i'm all ears.
 
ok I see you said you junped the service plug.. I never have done that to check timing and never had a problem..
 
You said the water pump and cam hears are in line but what about the crank pulley?

Seems odd if mechanical timing was off that much because you'd think it'd run like crap.

Just for giggles.....take #1 spark plug out and then place a long screw driver down the cylinder until it rests on the piston. Then see where the cam gears line up when the screw driver is at its highest point.
 
werd, go back to old school and put something in cylinder 1
sounds like you got some shit fucked up
sounds to me like your cam is off a tooth
make sure you go straight from cam gear down to crank taunt as fuck, then worry about the rest
if you work the other way around you're gonna get slack and miss a tooth
 
yeah, good ideas. i'll get this figured out this sunday for sure. i'll post an update as soon as it's sorted.
 
took awhile to actually get to it, but it turned out that the pulley indeed had enough slop in it to cause my timing issues.

i pulled the whole timing cover off to verify TDC marks on the cam gears and crank gear. they all lined up perfectly, then put the pulley back on with the covers off so i could see the timing marks on the cam gears. i could seriously spin the pulley about 20degrees without moving the cam gears (and with tension in the timing belt.)

so i put the lower cover back on, put the pulley on and made sure the cam gear marks stayed aligned while i torqued the crank bolt. took a few tries to get it to not move while being torqued, but i got it to stay lined up with the TDC mark. reassembled everything else, then was able to set timing correctly.

all that lost power returned, and then some. it's got some serious traction issues in first gear now. thanks for the input everyone.
 
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