Intermittent Starting baffling me

[DrMaxwellEdison]

Hello all,

Recently I did a water pump replacement and did the timing belt/etc because the water pump and cam seal needed replacing.... before this it drove and ran fine, now since I replaced all these things the car will barely rev... and will not go very fast when put in drive... it will start one time and die and then not start for awhile.... this is my daily driver and I'm currently job hunting, so this really puts a hindrance on my being able to work without a car (nearest job is 30 miles away 1 way)

[Larry Hampton]

Did you get the VAF plugged back in? Sounds like what happened to me.

[DrMaxwellEdison]

yeah I plugged vaf back in

[JoDan]

Check the base timing since you messed with the timing belt. Remember that the timing marks on the cam are 12 and 3 o'clock.

[DrMaxwellEdison]

lined everything up with marks before I removed it so it would all line up when o
I put it back together, I'll check to see whether it skipped a tooth

[FestYboy]

the cam won't hold it's position once you remove the belt, you have to be concious (sp) of your timing marks when re-installing the belt.

[DrMaxwellEdison]

I removed the seal that the cam sits in and put a new one in. it never moved ...

[Zanzer]

Unless the cam and valvetrain "parked" in just the right spot, typically it will move whenever you pull the belt off. Valves that are open have spring pressure on them and when you remove the belt it also removes the resistance to the cam being loaded by the springs. Usually it will spin to unload this spring pressure and find an "at rest" spot. Sometimes it will move very little and sometimes it will move a lot. It all depends on where the cam parks and how much spring pressure it's fighting.