warning, this is a long one


Hi guys! After a few months of driving my first car, disaster struck: the water pump pulley broke on the timing belt in such a way that it was still attached, but sort of slanted forwards, resulting in the car going off-time and actually shutting itself off.
We towed it to our garage, and replaced both the water pump and the belt as well as the pulleys and tensioner and such, but put the new belt on in the exact same timing as the old one (by marking the relative positions of each of the sprockets and the belt.) See, at the time, we thought that maybe the timing wasnt actually off, and that the car just “knew” to shut itself off when the water pump broke. A dumb thought, I know
So of course after reassembly the car still didnt start. It’s important to note that the car always seemed to turn over, but just couldnt get itself to actually start or stay started.
We got down to the timing belt again and tried manual timing, utilizing the cam clamps and everything. After we did all that,it appeared as though we were previously a tooth off. We tried to start it, and got better results, kind of: the car starts after a real struggle, and only stays started if we feather the gas. It definitely doesnt sound healthy! Spark and fuel delivery both work fine, and I’ll be testing for compression early tomorrow. My question is, is there any minor issue that I maybe overlooked? This is my first car, so it’s very possible that the answer is right in front of me and I’m just not seeing it. Could it be off-time even still? And if so, how do I confirm that? Or did I maybe bend a valve? Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

 

Also, I have had my CEL on since I bought the car, but it always read as just an EVAP leak, so it was basically ignored. Doubt it's relevant, but you never know! I'll be reading it again as soon as I can get my hands on a reader.

 

 

Since the 3.0 V6 is an interference engine, I would expect that you have one or more bent valves.

Easily checked with a compression test or a leakdown test.

Good luck...

 

Did you pop the valve cover and lock with the camshaft alignment tool?

It looks like this:

Good luck!

 

If you don't do this procedure "by the book" you can expect problems. George said that this is an interference engine. That means if it goes out of time for whatever reason, you can pretty much guarantee engine damage, usually bent valves.