thewhitewarrior

hi, i have just finnished rebuilding my 95 sti engine after an oil pump seal went and killed my big ends, now its all in i have started it but it sounds like it is running on 3 cylinders, i have checked all the coils and plugs and all seems well with a good spark on all, i am wondering if the cam belt went on 1 notch out, if it has would it make it run lumpy, coughing and not rev that well, cheers phil.

ZEN Performance

Check that you have put the correct coil pack on the correct cylinder. You should connect the front two coilpacks to the white/grey connectors, and the rear coilpacks to the black coilpacks.

thewhitewarrior

yes they are all on correct, i always remeber that black is the back ones, could it be the cam belt.

merlin24

iTrader: (1)

Start with a compression test to confirm the engine build was ok.

thewhitewarrior

will do, but would the cam belt being 1 notch out do it, because when i put it on it was a little tight to see on the bottom right cam (L-ex) the line on the belt was in the middle of a tooth.

ZEN Performance

one tooth on one cam isn't going to make that much difference. check compression, fuel and spark. Once compressino test is complete, run engine and selectively unplug a coilpack at a time, then an injector at a time, it will soon tell you which cylinder is playing up.

thewhitewarrior

i will take all the ideas and look tommorrow, ill let you know what i find, thanks for the help, phil.

mit

iTrader: (10)

I did a 2.5 conversion on my last impreza,and managed to swop the inlet and exhaust cams over on one head(funny now!). This caused the same problem your describing. The car was only running on one head(two cylinders),yet ran much better than i'd expect.

thewhitewarrior

hi all again, i have found the problem, i stripped the engine down on the right side and noticed when i was putting it back together that i had mixed up the inlet and outlet cams somehow but the pullies were on in the right places, this is why if you look i said i couldnt get the belt to line up on the bottom right pully, because the cams were 180 degrees out, i wish id read the reply from mit when he wrote it, thanks anyway mit you were right, and thanks for all the suggestions, phil.

mit

iTrader: (10)

It's easy to do! I was amazed that it started so easy when i did it,and that didnt damage the the valves.

thewhitewarrior

same here, it was lumpy but still ran, was everything ok then, it never damaged anything.

mit

iTrader: (10)

I never did a compresion test,but ran the car for a year with no problems,just swoped them back and all was good!