Hello again. I ha e a ea81 1.8 engine sitting in my driveway. I removed this engine because i could not get cylinders 2 and 4 to fire. I did replace the engine head gaskets and cleaned the valves in headers and put it back together. When i installed engine back in car i was not able to get it to fire correctly. I have new wires spark plugs rotor and cap and nogo. I did pull the wires from cylinders 2 and 4 and did see a spark in them. Obly reason i know these two cylinders are not working is because the engine will have a terrible shake to it and by plasing my hand below the header were exhaust goes only one side was hot. Could it be that i have a bad distributor even tho i see sparks coming from wires 2 and 4? 

 

Thanks.

I would re check the timing at the belts again... all should be good if ya do it by the  book...

Verify the firing order: 1324.

Do a compression test. 

Check valve clearance.

also check the vacuum, massive leak from the manifold on that side maybe.  id still predict timing is a likely culprit but ive never done the 81's so i dont know how the gear system works.  its easy to mix up ea82 and ea81 info if someones not paying attention so double check all the settings are for the 81 (and that you have an ea81).

bent push rods can do this and can sometimes be seen as bent by removing rocker cover to sometimes see not only bent but fallen out of place

Valve clearances. This happened to me on one bank as well. 

I'd be double checking all valve clearances to ensure they're good

Cheers

Bennie

When you had the engine apart changing the head gaskets,etc., did you stuff a rag or something in the intake ports to keep unwanted things out while the engine was apart? If so, maybe you forgot to take it out of that head when you put it all back together. I've heard of that happening to other people before, but never to me (I wish).

Could also be a big coolant leak from the intake manifold gasket on that bank of cylinders.

My money is on valve clearances being too small for that bank though.

May need to reset distributor timing, make sure that engine at tdc and the dissy fire order is where it should be. This caused my ea81 not to start always helps to check