Help! Car will not start after timing belt replacement

[MaineSpider75]

I decided to tackle replacing my timing belt, water pump, and radiator (which was leaking) this past week. This Spider is my first real experience working on my own car, so I've done a lot of reading on here, looking at YouTube videos etc. Although all of the information was very helpful, there's nothing like actually doing the job yourself to understand exactly what needs to get done.
I won't get into all of the effort to remove the water pump pulley, crankshaft pulley, etc, but I did get the radiator out and everything torn down enough that I was able to remove the timing belt. I spent a good amount of time getting all of the timing marks lined up, then removed the old belt and installed the new belt. Everything looked fine, so I moved on to the water pump. Installed a new alternator belt as well, and then installed the new radiator.
Feeling very pleased with myself, I filled the radiator up and eagerly jumped into the drivers seat to start the car so I could start the car and finish topping up the radiator.
Car would crank, but would not turn over at all. I tried until basically the battery was drained, so I threw the battery onto a charger and gave up for the night.
Next morning, I put the battery back in, crossed my fingers, and tried again. Same issue. Car cranks, but it doesn't sound like it's trying to spark at all.
So, back to reading online to see if I could diagnose the problem. I thought perhaps I had inadvertently damaged my coil, so I tried grounding the coil wire to the engine and confirmed spark. I then removed a plug and verified spark there as well. I then moved over to the carburetor and verified the fuel pump was working and fuel seemed to be making its way into the cylinders (as evidenced by the wet plugs I had to clean up after cranking the engine for so long).
I decided to re-verify my timing, so I moved everything to TDC, and noticed that my crankshaft pulley was out of alignment, so I loosened the belt and re-adjusted so everything was properly aligned. I then removed the distributor cap in order to verify it was pointing to the #4 plug. This is what I found:



It appeared that the distributor was out of alignment, so I adjusted that as well. Buttoned everything back up and tried yet again to start the car. No luck, and I am at my wits end at this point.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for me before I tow the car to a mechanic?

[RRoller123]

The distributor pointing to #4 can be tricky, because the contacts may not be where the spark plug wires enter the cap. Take a close look at the disty cap and make sure that the rotor is pointing directly at the contact on the inside of the cap that is for cylinder/spark plug #4. It may not be actually pointing towards #4, it could be pointing anywhere. Make sure that you have the spark plug wires in the proper firing order on the cap too.

Pete

[MaineSpider75]

I confirmed the location of the #4 contact inside the cover, and then marked the outside of the cover with white out. Then I carefully lined the cover back up so the screws were lined up, and placed the cover back onto the disti. I lifted the cover back up and voila! you get the white out mark on the disti body you see in the photo. I then realized that the distributor body had a mark on it that lined up perfectly with the white out, and assumed that was to indicate the #4 position.

[RRoller123]

So if I understand you correctly, with everything else lined up properly, you rotated the distributor a little CCW (maybe 20deg based upon your pic) so that the rotor now points directly at the white mark that has been confirmed to coincide with plug #4 cap contact?

Pete

[MaineSpider75]

So if I understand you correctly, with everything else lined up properly, you rotated the distributor a little CCW (maybe 20deg based upon your pic) so that the rotor now points directly at the white mark that has been confirmed to coincide with plug #4 cap contact?

Pete

Yes, that is correct. The distributor was turned until the rotor pointed directly at the white mark and indent in the body of the distributor, then tightened back down.

[jetboy]

a couple things to try before you call a tow truck.

there are only 3 things the car needs to have it start, and you should check all three before you assume one- sometimes it can be more than one!

1. fuel: easy to test- spray ether (starter fluid) into the intake valves (open the carbs and spray past). try to start. if it starts, your issue is fuel (air and/or gas). I know you are seeing gas.. but you may be getting too much or the wrong mixture. ether will find out for you.
2. Compression: again, easy to test- just go get a compression tester, they are cheap or you can borrow one. make sure its within acceptable range.
3. Electrical: you are already on this, but though logically this would be the issue since you made some changes, it may not be at all. you might have pinched a fuel line or something - - who knows, the car spontaneously had another problem. it happens.

4. random thought: try new plugs. if you have washed them down with gas with many failed starting attempted they can be destroyed even if they look clean and fire when in open air - they may not be firing in the cylinder under compression and in the wet gas. another cheap check to grab new plugs and try.

[MaineSpider75]

Thanks for the suggestions jetboy.

So, today I replaced the plugs and tried starting fluid. No impact at all. Car just cranks and cranks.
I guess my only choice at this point will be to pick up a compression tester tomorrow. Can anyone tell me what psi I should roughly expect with a dry and wet test?

On a side note, I reconfirmed spark coming out of the coil; but how do I know if its enough or not?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[narfire]

I noticed you said you had spark at the plugs.
If that has changed, confirm before going much further.

If it is sparking at the right time then with a little dribble of fuel down the carb you should have ignition.... If not, me thinks spark is not at right time. As you mentioned a fully charged battery is a must.
Chris

[So Cal Mark]

did you remove the cam sprockets?

[Shadoobie]

I had a similar issue with mine after rebuilding the head and we ended up having to set the timing off quite a bit to get it to run until we realized we put the cam gears on backwards, as I believe Mark is suggesting. It's definitely worth it to ensure you have the gears on the correct side.

[MaineSpider75]

I was going to replace the gaskets behind the cam sprockets, so I attempted to remove the bolt on the intake cam. The bolt would turn with tension, but would not loosen while the cam sprockets remained fixed. It seemed like something was moving inside but can't be sure. I decided that since I couldn't remove with a traditional socket wrench, I would leave the cams alone and just monitor for leaks. Is it possible I screwed up the intake timing even though the sprocket itself didn't move? If so, how do I fix it?

[RRoller123]

Were the valve covers off when you rotated the intake sprocket bolt? So that you could you visually see the camshaft itself turning? And if I read you correctly, the bolt and sprocket would rotate together, but you couldn't get the bolt to rotate without rotating the cam sprocket as well? I assume the timing belt was OFF the car while this was happening? Or was it still installed? It is important that we understand the answers to these questions to help out.

fyi; camshaft "seals", not "gaskets", just so we all use/share the common terminology.

[MaineSpider75]

Were the valve covers off when you rotated the intake sprocket bolt? So that you could you visually see the camshaft itself turning? And if I read you correctly, the bolt and sprocket would rotate together, but you couldn't get the bolt to rotate without rotating the cam sprocket as well? I assume the timing belt was OFF the car while this was happening? Or was it still installed? It is important that we understand the answers to these questions to help out.

fyi; camshaft "seals", not "gaskets", just so we all use/share the common terminology.

Valve covers were not off. Spark plugs were still in. Old timing belt was still on. I had all timing marks lined up, and had just gotten the crankshaft pulley off, so I wanted to see if I could loosen the cam sprocket bolts before I removed the belt.

The bolt on the intake cam was the only thing that I turned. The sprocket remained fixed. When trying to loosen the bolt (and forgive my somewhat vague description here), there was tension, and I wrenched it hard and the bolt actually felt like I had loosened it. I turned the bolt again, and it was slightly loose, then tightened back up to the point that I wrenched it past the tight point and loosened somewhat again. After repeating this maybe a half dozen times, I decided the bolt wasn't going to actually come loose without an impact wrench (which I don't have), so I gave up and moved on to replacing the belt.

I am 100% confident that the sprocket itself remained in the same position the entire time. If it moved at all, all other sprockets, etc moved as well and I lined everything back up before removing the old belt.

[RRoller123]

Ok, got it. Was worried that maybe there was an interference problem if the camshafts rotated separately from each other and the pistons. One question is: How could the timing belt be still on if the crankshaft pulley was off? Assuming that the belt was still on the gear sprocket down there?

[MaineSpider75]

Ok, got it. Was worried that maybe there was an interference problem if the camshafts rotated separately from each other and the pistons. One question is: How could the timing belt be still on if the crankshaft pulley was off? Assuming that the belt was still on the gear sprocket down there?

Yes the belt was still on the gear sprocket.