eclypse

So the car ate it's timing belt. Mulched it. Was pretty awesome and sucked all at the same time.

I ported/polished the heads in hopes of bolting on a blower and making 300+whp, but the wife didnt care for it, so now I'm just trying to reassemble it.

Heads are on, cams are aligned to the marks indicated in the FSM, crank is aligned to it's mark.

Question: Cylinder 3's valves are open when I roll the rear head's sprocket to it's mark. From what I can tell, that's perfectly normal, I just want to verify? If I take a wrench and align it, and baarely tap the wrench, that cylinder slams shut, as the valves are open and the springs are under tension. That's normal before I start rolling this engine over, right?

I hate cars

It's normal. I hated that sprocket. Everytime I bumped it by accident it would snap to a different postion. Obviously you're going to have some spots in each cam's rotation where some valve springs are dominate over others. It's easy to see why it can take well over 5hp to drive the valvetrain. Nothing to worry about.

nfnsquared

Yep, perfectly normal. The rear sprocket is notorious for that. Plenty of documentation of this in the DIY timing belt thread.

paperboy42190

iTrader: (7)

normal. i encountered it when I did my timing belt

eclypse

i actually printed the DIY thread to take to the garage but i "read it" like one reads a Playboy. didnt realize it mentioned that.

thanks for the responses, gents.

cummins guy

Eclypse, Sorry to hear about the timing belt.
Just curious of how many miles have on your car?

eclypse

~150k. and i swear i thought the belt was changed more recently than my wife did, but even if she's right, this belt slung it's guts everywhere with ~40k miles on it. i was out of the country or i'd have done the work myself.

pics of the carnage here:
http://x345.firegremlins.com/~seanb/cars/acura/

nfnsquared

Damn, was there a break in the belt? Hard to tell from the photos. I'm betting the tensioner failed rather than the belt...

eclypse

not real sure. was just powder and belt fragments by the time i took it apart. im replacing anything that can be replaced behind the timing covers, though!