Glad you figured it out. That could have been a real head scratcher.

i like your confidence on the timing belt marks wish i could say the same for my won t start .

I replaced the front  crank  oil seal on my 91 2.2 .bought a new timing belt and bearing set .replacedthe old stuff cranked her up and it ran and returned to idle fine. I started putting the covers back on and found 2 bolts that i cound t find a home for 10 mm x maybe 1 .5 inches  sooooo  thinking maybe i installed the wrong bolts in the timimg belt tentioner i proceded to take everything back apart

replaced the 1 inch bolts with 1.5 in bolts reset the belt and now it won t crank .I have put the belt on a couple of times an am thinking maybe i should start at the beginning .  makeing sure the #1 is at tdc is my question how do i procede?from start to finish on this belt  replacement 

So...............here's the twist.

when i swapped out  coil packs and started the car it did take a couple of minutes to fire up and blow out the cob webs. I had the exhaust manifolds loose and it was noisy. so for my neighbor's sake, i shut her down and tightened them up.

i started again ans she ran for a few seconds and started to bog i tried to accelerate but nothing. the hissing sound was back.............clogged catalyst as i had suspected earlier. so in a nut shell i had suspected this to be the culprit and loosened the exhaust the night before but the plugs were already fouled. in the morning they were dry and would have started with whatever coil i had on it.

to check this theory i put the old coil pack on the 94 and she started right up.........wtf!!!

 

i dropped the exhaust, cut out the catalyst and found it had a dent and the front biscuit had been turned to powder.

i got my carb cleaner and sprayed from the back  and then took the air chuck and dried it  until i  could see through the other biscuit. I welded it back in and mounted. now she runs good..............

Any hoo.................What a ride this car took me on.

update. so i went to start up the 92 the other day. it fired up then died after 3 seconds and began its tantrum all over again. i was getting irradical plug firing order again. i focused my attention on a wiring modification made under the steering column that seemed to be the remenances of a remote start /alarm install harness without the part that it plugged into. i removed the harness and re-attached the starter solenoid wire that was spliced and sent to a relay. i did not see any other splices so i tried firing up. no spark at all now. i looked for the ignition fuse and it had no fuse in place and no power to the fuse slot either when the ignition was in the on position. now i must remove the dash board and examine every wire to try to find where the ignition wire was spliced.

At this point i am most likely going to swap the wiring harness out of the 94 as long as it is compatible as i hav researched and found there is a three and two engine plug setup.

can anyone tell me which wire should have 12 v at the the ecu to be able to run the engine?

anyhoo.................i ended up swapping out the wiring harness from the 94 to no avail...

the one from the 92 was spliced and compromised anyway... so why not? 

still same issue...

I narrowed it down to cylinders 1 and 3  flooding.

the coil pack will not fire any of the plugs when more than one is fouled

i verified this by getting 2 and 4 to run while grounding out plugs 1 and 3 on the intake. it would run on 2 cylinders lol !!. 

as soon as i removed the plugs from ground or inserted them into the flooded cylinders the engine would die.

so i thought it was bad injectors..once again to no avail after swapping and cleaning injectors and fuel rails..

i was ready to condemn the engine as a camshaft or valve problem. 

I started to pull the engine to swap in the 94 but decided to check the timing again...(which i was sure not the problem).....there it was!!!!

the belt was slipping and causing cylinders 1 and three to flood instead of burning the fuel.

My first diagnosis was correct... it was a timing issue...

i started pulling the belt ready to throw the tensioner rod across the galaxy upon removal.... but found the cogged idler pulley was seized.

 

Summary: (for those who love reading)

 

PROBLEM 1:

The  cogged pully had an intermittent bearing failure. 

This caused me to replace the timing  belt and examine the pulleys which seemed to be fine by my wallet's standards.

 

PROBLEM 2:

The exhaust was damaged with a busted and clogged catalyst causing the exaust to pressurize and not allow the engine to run.

This i  dubbed as the problem and she started up and ran fine for a couple of days and then back to the same.

 

PROBLEM 3:

 the wiring harness had problems from a botched alarm install causing the ignition to lose power at times as well as the starter

thinking it was shorting out the ignition intermittently,I then went mid-evil on the harness and swapped it out.

 

Dose of the ol' Trifecta 

 

Car runs great now but getting all the loose ends tied up.