The School of Hard Knocks

[LanceM]

I went a bit haywire today. I took out the radiator, condenser and set my engine to TDC in preparation to remove largish chunks of it. That's when I discovered that my timing mark reads at 15 degrees BTDC when I'm @ TDC. This could explain a few things. The timing has been set at around 23 or so, this is with the vacuum advance disconnected! (It leaks). Though it still doesn't explain the lowered compression (there are some more unsavory ideas about that!) it explains some of the other ills I've been suffering from. I should have noticed this weeks ago :stupid: .

The noise: Should the lash pads be firmly against the rocker arm when the valve is closed? Mines a bit loose. This is, no doubt, the cause of the remaining noise I'm hearing.

How did you determin TDC? If the mark really is off then the dampner may be failing or may have been changed with another year model, I understand that some years the pointer was moved but don't know when/which. If the cam had been installed using the mark as the reference then it would be advanced/retarded (too early in the morning to think which) which would cause some odd compression readings with the valves being out of time with the piston stroke.

Valve lash pads will be loose by the amount of valve clearance set with the valve closed.

[sideshowbob]

I'm going out to check the cam again in a minute, I should mention that *I* changed the damper. The original was probably the one that came with the f54 block and I put in a 78 unit. The old one had seperated. I've never set the cam timing myself, other that to play with the cam sprocket a bit and resetting it back to #1. I found this by setting tdc looking through the spark plug hole and both cam lobes *appear* to be closed but I'm going back out to double check. I have a feeling that something very basic, and probably very serious, is bad here.

[sideshowbob]

While screwing around, I did what I should have done long ago, but didn't. My compression read 'ok' so I didn't think about it for some time. I squirted some oil in the cylinders and got a whopping 200 psi of compression (compared to the 150 dry). Cam timing is fine as far as I can tell and twisting the crank back and forth shows only 4-5 degrees of chain slack. Looks like it's time for a new engine. $^!#.