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i recently took my 79 luv to a "mechanic". he rewired the truck's engine compartment and was suppose to time the engine. well he did the wiring. this is what he emailed me...

"I've installed the new coil and hooked up the battery but there is still something wrong with the engine. I'm getting spark to the spark plugs and have double checked the firing order, but can not get it to even begin to fire up."

what can the problem be... he's had my truck for 4 weeks already and i just want it up and running...

Fuel pump relay wiring, points bad or adjusted wrong, bad condensor on the distributor, timing way off, coil resistor bypass relay wiring, alternator wiring, choke or other carb wiring, firing order wrong. There are a number of things that could be wrong. I would think a mechanic would be able to figure out what they did wrong, but maybe that is giving this "mechanic" too much credit.

If it were sitting in front of me, I'd wire the coil to the battery directly and make sure the carb had some fuel in it (fill it manually or hardwire the fuel pump to run) and then troubleshoot it from there. If it doesn't run with the coil powered, fuel and running the choke by hand then start on the points and condensor and move to the carb next.

This truck did run when you took it in to this "mechanic" right?

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95 Isuzu Trooper Daily Driver
86 Isuzu Trooper reliable backup
77 LUV 2wd stock beltway blaster (resting)
79 4x4 LUV project: 2.6L, 5spd, 31s (eventually)

MEPR: Man, my 4x4 makes all other LUVs look good

yeah it ran but needed a new head gasket... what im thinking is that when he removed the head he might of changed the position of the sprocket or the chain and screwed things up. is this possible? and its my fault for taking it to this guy to begin with...

That is absolutely possible. He probably put the cam sproket on 180 out. Tell him to swap plug wires, 1 for 4 and 2 for 3 and see if that gets it running. If it does tell him he put the cam in backwards and to fix it. All he would have to do is line up the crank at 0 on the timing marks, take the gear loose from the cam, pull the rocker assembly, rotate the cam gear and cam halfway around and put it back together. If you want to give him the complete correct procedure here is a link to an old thread where I described the process of lining it all up in detail: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11064&p=81556&hilit=cam+timing#p81556

The thing that gets people on cam timing is you gotta line up #4 on the distributor at TDC and then line up the camshaft mark with the mark on the rocker shaft behind it. People tend to assume they need to line up #1 at the disti and that gets it backwards. The timing mark on the crank is at 0 with both #1 or #4 at TDC but the cam marks are lined up for #4.

_________________
95 Isuzu Trooper Daily Driver
86 Isuzu Trooper reliable backup
77 LUV 2wd stock beltway blaster (resting)
79 4x4 LUV project: 2.6L, 5spd, 31s (eventually)

MEPR: Man, my 4x4 makes all other LUVs look good