So I've done a lot of other work on my car but had never had the cams out of the head until I warped the crap out of my head and had to get a replacement.

I lubed the journals, caps, and lobes. The lifters were also lubricated prior to installation. After torquing the caps in the sequence covered in the service manual I tried turning the cam from the front bolt to get it in alignment for timing. I was able to put over the 40 ft/lbs required for the front bolt through it and started to turn the bolt into the cam more without any signs of movement. I know it should be somewhat hard to turn as it's compressing the #4 valves, but this doesn't feel right... The cam won't budge.

I am wondering if I screwed up re-using the cams that came out of the head that was badly warped? could they have bent with it and are now not true? Or maybe I'm missing something obvious? Caps were torqued to 12ft/lbs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm moving in a few weeks and was meant to have the car running today :(

 

Get the cams on a dial indicator to check run out. Sounds like what happens when you warp a head, cams may have bent too

 

Unfortunately I don't have access to a dial indicator at the moment, but that's re-assuring to hear that the cams could have warped with the head. The machine shop said the head was "severely warped" something like 6-7 thou on the top and bottom.

Luckily I have a spare set of cams I found in storage from another 1.8 head. I'm going to replace the possibly warped ones with the spares and see if the cam turns after being torqued down. Fingers crossed!

 

You did get the cam caps on in the correct positions? They are marked fairly clearly but if a couple are switched it will lock up the cam.

 

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I got $1 on an incorrect cam cap (location, mismatched head, direction)

Mostly because I've done the exact same thing.

 

Oh yeah, I did that on Laz's motor. Right order but backwards cap. Wouldn't budge.

 

Yup. Never again.

 

Nope, the cam caps were in the correct order using the stamped markings and orientated towards the front of the motor using the arrows.

I tried the backup cams/caps and luckily everything turns over smoothly now! Seems like the cams or caps out of the warped head were tweaked during the overheating process. I didn't realize just how out of whack everything was.

Thanks for the help!

Now to time this thing and get it running. Any tips on holding the cam gears at tdc? I think I used some tool last time but heard zip ties work? That or two wrenches and vice grips?

 

Caps need to stay with the head they came on. You can't switch them back and forth.

 

That might have been the issue then. I was trying to reuse some of the components from the head that overheated as it had less than half the miles than the replacement head I got, but lesson learned: leave everything together with the head.