Timing belt nightmare... at my wits end and need help.
 

Sorry for the long story.. but i'm just really frustrated now.

Last week I decided it was time to replace the timing belt, water pump on my 99 Camry 2.2L 4 cyl with 220k miles. This fairly straight forward project turned into a small nightmare.

Following the Hayes manual, I was able to get everything disassembled, and noticed oil all over the place. The source: cam seal, crank seal, oil pump cover seal, the pump to engine seal. ALL bad. After dropping the exhaust to pull the pan (ugg!), I discovered 2 small but growing holes in the exhaust pipe. So i fixed those. To get the cam seal out, I had to pull the cams. I checked the tolerances as suggested in the book, all within spec. Reassembled the cams and put them back in - the two alignment dots matched up nicely. Replaced the spark plugs -- just because I haven't in a while and i had them on hand.

After pulling the oil pump, I discovered the oil pressure release valve was jammed up tight (probably the primary culprit for all the other leaks). The plunger wouldn't drop at all. I ordered a new oil pump from Autozone. It arrived 4 painful days later, primed it, installed it.. good to go. Cleaned up both the cam and crank sensors as they were caked with oily grime, along with the rest of the timing cavity. I even replaced the timing cover dust seals since they were just oil soaked rot, or non-existent.

Installed the new water pump, new idlers, and belt checking the TDC marks on the dampener and the cam hole alignment mark - all looked correct. Did the crank test 6 times -- just to be sure everything was perfect. Installed both covers (Big mistake!), and everything else. Cranked over the engine and it started right up. But!! (you knew there would be a "But" in here... right?)

Seemed to run OK, but something was definitely "off". I heard a ticking that wasn't there before, and the engine would jump around between 400 and 800 rpm. I figured i missed a tooth on the belt. Pulled apart everything again to open the top cover - looks like a tooth off now. Retentioned the belt - engine running better. NO ticking sound. But now -- It's missing! And the cause of the miss is the spark plug cables are arcing between each other at the coil. 1&4 and 2&3 arc (cable to cable) sporadically causing a miss.

So I'm now at a complete loss where to look.

- Could this a cam shaft misalignment?
- Could it be a bad cam spark sensor since i cleaned the crud off with degreaser and carb cleaner?
- Is the crank on the exhaust stroke instead of the compression stroke?

The only good news to report is that when it's not arcing over and missing -- the engine sounds great, and it's all nice and clean again. But that's about it.

Any ideas? I really need some direction right now. :(

I'm almost to the point of giving up and taking it to -- them. (you know...real mechanics who can fix it but cost me $600 in labor).

Tim

Doubt the engine would start if the crank/cam alignment was 180 degrees off.

The crank rotates once for every two rotations of the cams. It has only one TDC position. Make sure the hole in the came pulley is lined up with the notch on top of the upper cam bearing mount when crank at TDC. This assumes the two cams are mated correctly.

A few questions.

The valve clearance shims were left in place and not mixed them up?

The service bolt was installed into the drive gears of the exhaust cam before taking it out?

There are two sets of alignment dots on each drive gear, the bottom two were lined up.

The engine now runs OK but has miss? How does it idle?

Ign arcing can cause all kinds of issues.

Check cam sensor resistance.
Cold 835 – 1,400 ohm
Hot 1,060 – 1,645 ohm

Crank sensor
Cold 985 – 1,600 ohm
Hot 1,265 – 1,890 ohm

Make sure the ohm reading is stable and not continuing to increase during the test.

Correct. I removed one at a time, checked, replaced, moved to the next.

Yes. The bolt was inserted before removal, and removed once replaced and alignment was double checked.

The two small dots in the gear teeth were lined up correctly. As I recall, the upper 2 marks aren't IN the gear teeth and Hayes book noted not to confuse these for alignment.

Idle is fine (~600 rpm & stable) - except when it arcs over of course. Then it misses and stumbles for a second. The arcing is sporadic - not constant. Run fine for 20-45 secs...arc once or three times... then run fine...then repeat.

Driving: Definite hesitation on pulling out, with the miss continuing regardless of speed/rpm. I only drive it around the block. (about 3 minutes.)

I'll do this today. Thanks for the specs.

From what I understand, I couldn't imagine these being the issue as they are just magnets on a coil-relay. How can they go bad? Plus, I think a bad sensor would signal an ECM comm error.

Just for grins, I pulled the new plugs, cleaned the threads with a long bottle brush and carb cleaner and back the old plugs and tested. Same result. Oh well. I've gone through this over and over in my head, and i'm at a loss.

Electricity will take the path to least resistance. Arcing tells me there is less resistance between the wires at the coil then at the spark-plug gap - which doesn't make sense me. The gap between the cables is probably 10x that of the spark gap - and it doesn't spark over at the cable bundle where the gap is only 1/4". It only arc's (from what I could tell) at the coil where the cables exit the plastic plug. It's a mystery.

The sensors do go bad but if they check out OK, should be OK.

Given your description it appears the issue is the arcing. Might look closely at the area that is arcing for carbon tracks. Once a carbon track is formed the resistance path goes down.

Check the ign wires for ohm reading should be 25K or less.

Make sure the ign wires are fully plugged into the coils.

You can try cleaning everything and applying dielectric grease.

If nothing helps try new plug cable. If still an issue new coils.

Thanks Joey.

OK -- well. All that worrying for nothing i guess.

Problem solved. :) I picked up a set of NGK's to replace the Autozone brand cables. I guess i was too quick to dismiss 9 month old cables as a cause. They rang out ok with a tester, no cracks or anything... but whatever. NGK's work - autozone brand doesn't. Everything else checked out fine.

The good news, Autozone took the store brand cables back and get the NGK's. The $14 difference was covered by my reward points. So - basically - free.

And now - My Camry (again) runs like a dream! Thanks again!

Next month: Full Suspension & linkage bushing replacement. Gotta get rid of those annoying little rattles (that apparently only I hear).