Big trouble on a KA24E

[KrazyKyle]

Hey guys long time reader, first time poster.

Let me say first off I did alot of searching, and I couldn't anyone with the similar problem I had. My car is a '90 model of course you all know it has the SOHC. The car just hit 200,000, but the engine was rebuilt at 183,000 (Supposedly). I bought the car for $800, it was a big peice of dung. I knew I would eventually have problems with it. After replacing quite a few engine accessories, hoses and belts. The car ran quite well for about 8 months, but the heat did not work. I went out to my car one night to start it before I went into work. It started but a heard a crackle, then a bunch of loud knocking coming from inside the engine. It turned out my timing chain guides broke (They still had the plastic guides inside it). I didnt start it up again until I had to pull it into my dad's garage after we towed it there. I went and bought all the necessary parts to replace what went wrong. All OEM equipment.

Full Timing Chain kit, a new oil pan gasket, New Thermostat, and some other misc. parts. I followed my service manual, and the instructions off these forums to the tee. When I started it back up the car idle ok, but when you gave it throttle it would backfire, and finally stall on you. The timing seemed to be off really bad. I went back and checked the timing, and everything checked out. The timing was dead on, but it still ran like crap. You could turn the distributor to make it run a little better, but it still was undriveable.

Also the heat still didnt work, and the coolant was not flowing. So I geuss I received a bad thermostat. Then the worst thing happened. While I was trying to figure out what was going on, all of a sudden coolant starting flowing from underneath the intake manifold. At that point I was so fed up with messing with the thing that I didnt really investigate it anymore after that. I shut it off and left it parked.

If anybody has had any related experiences, or can shed some light on this I would be extremely grateful.

[paysonboy801]

ok first things first take care of the leak, best bet its your manifold gasket that would be the first thing i looked at especialy if thats a part you replaced, I would try turning my distributor 180 degrees, I ran into that problem once, the car will run and it will all look right but run like crap or like in your case, barely run that would explain your massive missfire as well. Once i took care of all of that I would start looking for help or sell the car