Wise choice. I would be worried about bent valves too. It only takes one crank with timing off to bend at least some of the valves in the motor, rendering them useless. Your compression could be 0 and therefore no start...

Have them pull the head and take a look...

did you set the marks on the camgears with the valve cover?!?

That wont matter if the crank is off alignment.... You need to make sure all of them are at TDC or in the same position, otherwise valve slap will take place once it is cranked and there goes the whole ballgame.

Always double and triple check your work when working on timing components on an interference engine...

Yes, cam bearings. Those smooth places on the cam where it turns inside something inside the head - that gets pressurized oil. Some engines have replaceable bearing shells - such as the 4B11 - while others just run the iron cam bearing in the cam caps straight onto the machined aluminum surfaces.

Replaceable shell or not it's still a bearing.

well i was assuming that the crank was @ tdc.

Heres your problem. Your valves are probably all bent/broken.

update

I'd strongly recomment that you spend the money and get that car into the hands of professionals. It seems as if you have a serious mechanical problem. Did you oil the camshafts before putting them in??

The camshafts were freshly oiled during assembly. The car is going to CBRD on the 21st. If I remember I will update this post once the problem is diagnosed.

UPDATE:

The car was trailered to CBRD and disassembled again. The valves are all in good shape. Remember one of my first posts in this thread in which I said the cams don't seem to be moving as freely as they should. Nobody seemed to think it was a problem, so I assumed it was just the stiffer valve springs. Come to find out that the cams definitely should have turned easier, and even with the rockers and stuff removed they still don't turn. Mark said he put a set of stock cams they had laying around in my head - same problem.

I called the machine shop that did the head, and he says there is essentially no way the head could have been swapped with a head from a different motor. He also stated there was only 1 or 2 other heads there at the same time and the one is running and was on this site. He said it can be fixed by sending the head out and line honing everything which is like another 5 or 600 bucks plus shipping, but he did say he was going to help me out with that.

My question still goes unanswered... what can possibly happen to make the cam caps or head prevent the cams from spinning? I personally took the cam caps off and laid them out (on my clean, organized dining room table), then reinstalled in the exact fashion, so I know they weren't mixed. It's not like I have a spare set of caps either. Anyone have a clue?

the caps are numbered

the caps are on right,

they are number I2, I3 E1 E2 etc,

the problem is that the head has to be the wrong one,

the line bore isnt right now, you can feel the difference in the caps and the cam journal area on the head,

so, needs a line bore.. yep 700 bucks ish if we can get it done...

cb

EDIT - I am going to hold off on more posts until this situation either progresses or gets resolved. Chad, I will be sending you a PM.