nelstomlinson

@ccrinc, thanks, I roughly followed your instructions, and took care of a ticking noise on the passenger side of the engine. The #3 intake vales were a little loose, and the exhaust valves were probably double the lash they should have had. I must have messed up setting them when it was on the stand, but it's not too hard to do in the car. Anyway, it's running great now, no ticking, and the CEL hasn't come on again.

"Get on to the manufacturer" was a good suggestion. Here's what RP says:

How many hours would you run the break in oil? For my loader, the recommendation was 50 hours above 50% load, which would be roughly 1000 highway miles on a car.

I've seen those connectors on my old pickups. I despise'em, and cut'em off as I find'em.

I've gotten a little over 500 miles on the rebuilt EJ25, and I'm starting to wonder when I should do the first oil change. I filled it with Royal Purple special break in oil, I've been trying not to run at any one RPM for very long, doing all the usual break in routine. Should I change it out soon? or maybe just swap out the filter and keep using that fancy, expensive oil a couple thousand more miles? There's very little carbon showing in the oil, so I suspect the rings are seating nicely.

Y'all were right: it was the timing. When I got everything off the front of the engine, I could see that both cams were advanced about half dozen teeth relative to the crank. I have no idea how I did that. When we put it together the first time, we got the lines on the belt on the marks on the sprockets, and stood back and admired it, and looked twice...and somehow we got it wrong. So, we reinstalled the belt, and got the lines on the belt on the marks on the sprockets, and looked twice, and somehow we got it right, because this time it started right up. Thanks for your help!

I don't think the '02 has a maf? What's the IACV?

The old short block had the keyway get ruined, so crank, sprocket and harmonic balancer all had to be replaced. So, a new short block and new sprocket. I compared the old and new sprockets, they have the same number of teeth, and the tone rings look identical. I'll replace the cam and crank sensors this weekend. If that doesn't do it, we'll pull the engine and try reinstalling the belt, I guess.

Plugs and wires are both NKG, they really don't cost much more than the cheap stuff.

Backwards and upside down, but the two should cancel out, right? Yeah, numbers are on the coil, and I wrote the numbers on the plug wires with sharpie when I installed them.

Front left terminal to front left plug, and so on. Maybe I should try switching them up, back to front, just for kicks.

That surely looks like what we did. Only thing it doesn't show is the marks on the belt.

We didn't use the arrow when we installed the belt. We put a timing belt in an '08 a few weeks back with no drama, this went exactly the same, near as I can recollect. They do use different belts, which sorta surprised me.

Napa had the crank sensor in stock, they'll get me the cam sensor tomorrow. I tried it with the new crank sensor just now...didn't start, but the codes didn't come back, either.

The stored code is Crank Position Sensor, the pending code is Cam Position Sensor. From memory, P0336 and P0341. I wonder if I should try replacing both, just to be sure one hasn't failed. I found the tooth count in the manual, but the rim on the edge of the cam sprockets kept us from counting the last half-dozen-ish teeth. The count looked close, at least. Like I said above, we lined up the marks on the belt with the marks on the sprockets. If we pull the engine and re-install the belt, what could we do differently this time?

I did have to use a new crank sprocket. I made sure to compare it to the old one, the tone ring looked identical. I did use the same LH cam sprocket. We used a Mitsuboshi timing belt, and double checked that the marks on the belt were lined up with the marks on the sprockets. It seems like it _shouldn't_ be off. I'll hook up a code reader, and see if it shows anything. How do I check the cam timing? Am I looking for the arrow on the LH sprocket to be straight up when the harmonic balancer mark is on zero?

Still cranks and coughs, but won't start even with ether. The manual says that the primary side coil resistance should be 0.73 Ohms, terminals 1-2 &3-4. I'm reading open circuit on the primary side. The secondary side reads 12.x KOhms, as the manual says it should. My junkyard spare coil, pulled from a running engine, gives the same readings. The odd thing is that the timing light will indicate spark as I crank. I wonder if a very weak spark could trigger the light without igniting the mixture?

Put together an EJ25 engine for my '02: rebuilt short block from Subaru, reliable machine shop went through the heads. I assembled it and stuck it in the car, and it refuses to start. It has ~150PSI compression on all four cylinders, pulled the fuel line between filter and engine, it squirts fuel. The engine was running OK (except for the fatal timing issue) when I took it apart, so I assumed everything attached to the intake manifold was OK. I cranked and cranked, and it occasionally coughed but never caught, even when I tried starting fluid. When I pulled the plugs to check compression, I found the two front plugs had wet, black fouling, the two back plugs were clean. Any ideas what to check, and how to check it?

The car started right up in the shop, with coolant temp at +50F. It doesn't start at all now with coolant temp 30F cooler: it cranks, coughs a little, but never catches. This is really getting irritating. When I get the '02 running I'll probably just park this one for a while. I really hate fussing with spark engines that don't run right.

The engine is back together, and we've dug the car out of the snowbank and gotten it into the shop to thaw out. We'll try to get it installed and tested tomorrow. What sort of oil do y'all recommend for the break in period? I'm figuring some cheap, non-synthetic 5W-30 for 500 miles, then an oil change with more dino oil and give it about 2000 miles before switching to synthetic.

Y'all were right about the Felpro head bolts: they're garbage. The heads are between 14mm and 15mm, the threads are rough as if they're galvanized. I reused the originals.

I changed the plugs, and it's starting a lot easier: crank-crank-roar! instead of cranking for 10+ seconds. The plugs looked OK, and the gap was still barely in spec. I changed'em anyway, and it started quick and easy for the first time in a week or so. Cylinder 2 plug was a little more discolored than the other three, but none of them look like there's serious trouble.

Oh. I'll look for a vacuum leak, too. It could be hard starting because it's getting a lean mixture.

It's been 100% about requiring much cranking. I'll have time to try it this weekend. I'll crank in the dark and look for arcing and sparking, and I definitely have a can of starting fluid on hand. What should the fuel trim readings be? Would they be off if the injection was going wrong?

I'm not sure when we last filled up, we don't really track that. It's possible it's bad gas, I suppose I'll have to check the maintenance log in the car about the plugs and wires - from memory they're probably a couple years old, under 10k miles, but I might be thinking about the other '96. It's hard to remember what I did to which when, which is why I keep a little log book in the glove box of each rig. Thanks for the link, that's helpful. This kind of thing is why I hate spark ignition. My diesels don't have these flaky problems.