96' Sephia Timing Problem
jlturner45
05-12-2005, 09:55 PM
I replaced the fuel pump, starter, battery, and a couple other little things on this car, and now have gotten to the point of being able to start, but still won't. I have spark in all 4 cylinders, what looks to be compression (gas mixture puffing out of open plug holes), gas in the cylinders (all over the plugs), but no firing. I had a problem with another car about a year or so ago, that turned out to be the timing belt, and this seems to be doing the same thing that gave it away as a timing belt problem, that would be the intake blowing air out, rather than sucking it in. Now due to this, I am most likely going to have to postpone what I was supposed to do tomorrow, and get this fixed, but I can not find a book anywhere that can help me do this. I don't know where the timing marks are, and really, I have never messed with the timing before, but I would really like to learn, and what better time than now when it really needs to be done very quickly. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, so thank you in advance, and I will thank you again after.
jlturner45
05-13-2005, 11:01 PM
I called the dealer today, and the lady in the parts department was amazingly helpful. She looked up in their online service manual that they use when working on cars, and printed out step by step instructions for me to change the timing belt, and faxed the instructions to me, all 18 pages, with diagrams and everything. Turned out the timing had just jumped a bit, but the belt was still good, so I took a short cut in reseting the timing. For anyone interested, I slipped the timing belt off of the cam gears, and used a wrench on the cam gear nuts to rotate them to the correct alignment, and then had my wife hold the wrench in place while I slipped the belt back on, no need to fully disassemble the entire side of the engine. If anyone would like a copy of the instructions, send me a private message with your email address, and I will email a copy of them in a Word document. They are very good instructions for changing a timing belt, but they start at the installation point, so to disassemble, you must start from the end to see what needs to come off.
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