Thanks to all who have been helping and reading my posts so far. Here is the situation: I have just re-installed my passenger side camshafts. I 16 rollers between timing marks and the cams are oriented correctly, with the locking bar in place.

But, I am afraid I might have messed up badly. When I was putting the cams in place, they would not sit neatly in the correct orientation (eyeballing the locking plate). So I held the place as close;y to the right place as I could (pretty close) and began to tighten down the caps as evenly as possible. But the cams turned a little, clockwise. "No worries" I thought, "I'll just fix that with the locking bar later". So I carried on tightening the caps - but when I'd finished, I realized that the cams were rotated much more. I hadn't seen it happening. They were a bit shy of 90 degress off, clockwise. I then did what seemed like the only solution - I used the cam lock bar and a channel lock on the unfinished part of the exhaust cam and rotated them back into alignment. Then seemed to kind of slip neatly into the correct position and I think they'll stay there without the bar.

In hindsight, reading some of ther archives here, I am now afraid I should not have tightened them down like this, and should not have rotated them back. It didn't feel like enough force to bend anything, but it's hard to tell when you have the leverage of the cam lock bar. Anyway since the timing is right now I'm going to finish putting it all back together and see what happens.

Can anyone put me out of my misery, one way or the other?

PS. My crank is pinned correctly.

 

You're probably OK. Did you have to rotate them clockwise? If so, I think you are OK.

 

Nope, that's the way they rotated by themselves. I had to rotate them back the other way.

 

Well I have been working flat out on this every minute I have.I am doing this in a storage unit a few miles from my apartment so I don't get many hours in the day when I can work on it

But I just cranked her over for the first time, and she fired up as always, no hesitation. There was a blood curdling ratting noise on startup but it only lasted for a few seconds. Would that be pressure coming back to the chain tensioners? Anyway once that died away everything seemed 100% normal. I let it idle for a few minutes, gave it a little gas, and everything sounded OK.

I am pretty sure I'd hear it if it was misfiring...right? I think this means I'm OK with the valves, but I haven't actually been able to drive it yet. I still have to reattach the bumper and a few other bits, and flush and bleed the coolant system.

 

That rattling sound was most likely the chain tensioner as you suspected. Since the engine is running w/o any contonuing abnormal sound, you're fine.

 

I think you are good to go. Mine made that same rattle on starting but it only lasted long enough for me to say "s**t" to myself and then it smoothed out. No problems. Flushing the cooling system was the hardest part of the job. Getting the upper heater hose to expose the bleed hole was just so much fun.

 

the hydraulic lifters pumping back up, before which there is a lot of valve train noise from the initial clearance. Regardless, it has always been brief and w/ no recurrence.

 

Hydraulic lifters on these engines will pump down over long periods of time and usually take a few minutes of running before it slowly fades away. The quick rattle sound for a few seconds is the cam chain tensioner.

 

OK finally just drove it for the first time since I did the work. It drives flawlessly. The timing was perfect before so no improvement in power but that's ok, for a car with 190K miles it pulls like a train

It's safe to say I'm pretty relieved. Thanks to all you guys for helping me, and for helping everyone else too since I got as much help from the archives as anywhere else.

I did notice something, maybe nothing, but there was a little vapour or smoke when I let it idle up to temp the other day, coming from around the rear of the passenger side valve cover. It was accompanied by a smell, which I can only describe as kind of like epoxy or glue. That smell was still there when it drove it just now. I am hoping this is excess gasket sealant and/or crud that has been shaken loose from the work I did and is now burning away? There are no signs of anything abnormal in the engine, gets up to temp very promptly and stays at halfway just like it always did. Oil temp only got up to about 175 on my short trip.

 

Did you clean up the engine from any oil leaks? I usually clean off oily areas with brake cleaner, but make sure the engine is not hot or running, as some brake cleaners are flammable. If it still has a smell, then check for oil leaking.