HELP!! Car wont run after removing timing guides

[BlueTyGator]

Got some serious issues that came out of my attempt to remove the Timing Guides from my 240.



Today I tackled the timing guide removal on my new 240. This being my first project I decided to go see a mechanic friend of mine, he let me use one of his bays. (Plus some extra know how.)

As soon as I got the valve cover off my jaw dropped. The top guide had already been sheared off, and was just sitting atop the chain! (Pics of everything tomorrow.) It was really eaten up. But had not caught and gone anywhere thankfully. Next I took off the camshaft sprocket cover. Everything came apart real smooth. The chain and tensioner appeared to be in good shape. The side guide only had minimal wear on it. I took it off, and cleaned up the tensioner a little. So I say job well done and put it back together. Also I replaced the plugs while I was at it. Crank it up and she ran great, like a Swiss watch.

Heres where the BS begins. I get in the car and start to head home, but as soon as I hit 3K the engine starts jerking, acting like it was starved for fuel. Idling it was fine. No problems at all, But when you put the gas to it she started missing beats, almost regular, but not quite. I pulled it back in and checked the timing with a light. Everything seemed to be just right. I pulled Nissan specs on all of it. But those didn’t make any difference.

So I called my friend over and he starts looking at it. He thought that it had to be the timing too. Basically we spent 5 hours screwing with the distributor and the #1 cylinder. Everything we did seemed to make it worse. We tried advancing and retarding the timing through the distributor, we tried doing the same by pulling the distributor and setting it either 1 notch forward or backward. We tested the fuel system just to check pressure, @ 3k it floated in the 35 to 40 range dipping to about 30 when the engine would sputter. So we hooked that back up and started again with the timing, nothing made it better; in fact it got way worse. After several hours of troubleshooting the car WOULD NOT CRANK AT ALL!!! We really went over the timing good, because that is the only thing that was changed so that should be where my problem is. Nothing!!! At least as far as I can tell. We put everything back to its original place and still the engine would not turn over.

Next, my buddy starts to play with the coil. And the funniest thing happens. As he pulls the plug out of the coil the engine catches. So he holds it just outside of the coil and the engine caught again, but didn’t stay running. We ran an ohm test on the coil input, It's specd to pull 0.7 but read 1.4. I put my finger over the end of the coil while he turned it over and I got just a small shock, not the kind of jolt I expected.

All that being said I am going to replace the distributor cap, rotor button, plug wires and coil tomorrow night.

I just can’t figure out why removing the chain guides would cause all this??And why the hell it got worse the more I worked on it. I mean sitting in the garage purring like a kitten, to jumping down the road, to won’t even start... WTF!

If anybody can offer some advice I would REALLY appreciate it. I just don’t understand this at all. I miss my baby already
Modified by BlueTyGator at 9:28 PM 5/9/2006

[180fan]

pull the covers again and take a gander down below to see if any of the bolts holding the sprockets came loose or if you dropped a bolt down the front cover.

Something a bit more obvious though, you didn't happen to remove the guides at the block did you?

[jes_96]

You mentioned that you replaced the plugs while you were under the hood. My guess would be that when you were removing the plug wires, one of the wires was damaged enough to cause you some problems. This in turn could cause other problems with the distributor cap/rotor and/or coil and/or other wires. Chances are there was a weak spot somewhere in the ignition system and a gentle tug on a plug wire brought it to light. Good luck with it ... let us know what you come up with.

[JeromeS13]

You checked for codes from the ECU? If you do and get code 21 (IIRC), it could possibly be the actual distributor.

-Jerome