A few weeks ago my timing belt broke and bent a bunch of valves. So I replaced the timing belt and swapped on a used head. I got everything buttoned back up and got the engine fired up to get the coolant filled up and purged of air. The engine was idling relatively high (~2000 rpm) so once everything was warm I messed with the throttle cable to try and get the idle down to below 1000 rpm. The engine didn't really like being under 1000 rpm though. Then, as it was running I noticed an exhaust leak where the manifold connects to the down pipe. When I went to tighten those bolts I noticed that the exhaust manifold was glowing orange! The coolant temp gauge on the dash never showed the car to be overheating though so I continued messing with the throttle cable trying to get the idle under control. Not too long after that, the engine just shut itself off and now it won't start. It acts like it wants to start while I crank it, but it can't sustain itself. It feels kind of like a big vacuum leak but I can't for the life of me find any leaks. I quadruple checked the cam timing and everything was spot on before this happened.

Any ideas? The car is an 02 Lancer OZ.

 

If you have access to a code reader of some sort I would check for any codes. I would also check or just replace that coolant temp sensor incase that has went bad and you really were overheating. Did you check out the pistons and cylinder walls real good to be sure there was no other damage other than the valves? Manifold glowing orange while idling is bad news man even if it was high idle.

 

yea means the cat on that manifold is out makin the 02 sensor read retarted. there is a ad on here for a manifold for $40 in the private lancer for sale section.

 

Thought I'd post an update.

First to answer 03lances' questions. There are no codes being thrown and the pistons and cylinder walls looked fine.

I went to check to make sure the timing belt tensioner was set correctly (I couldn't remember tightening the bolt back down after turning the engine over twice). When I got back in there and started turning the engine over by hand again I found that my method of holding the crank pulley still by sticking a screwdriver through one of the holes had finally bit me in the *** and I bent the crank angle senor sensing blade. Unfortunately, I didn't see this before I turned the engine over one and shattered the crank angle sensor. Upon taking the crank sprocket off I noticed that the roll pins holding the sensing blades in line with the sprocket were bent (possibly from my ghetto method of holding the crank pulley still). My working theory right now is that since those pins were bent, the sensing blades were "out of phase" with the crank sprocket causing the timing to get all screwed up. Really retarded timing will cause very high EGTs I know. I flattened out the sensing blades and replaced the roll pins and the sensor.

Now I'm confident that the timing belt side of everything is kosher, however the engine still won't start. It's about this time I noticed that the left coil pack has taken a dump. There actually a protrusion sticking out of the top of the coil. I'm not exactly sure how/when that happened but it did and so I replaced that coil (this is getting more and more expensive!). Still no start so I start checking the basics again. First thing, looks like I'm getting no spark. I check the coil packs and they ohm out okay. The one that's not new might be on it's way out though. I checked for signal at the connectors. Ruh roh, there's no power getting to the coils! Terminal 1 (the left most terminal) on the connector should have 12v with the ignition on. The left coil connector has 5.7v at terminal 1 and the right coil connector has nothing. The grounds on both connectors test fine.

So it looks like I have a wiring issue. I did find that the 10 amp fuse on the ignition circuit was blown however a new fuse doesn't fix the lack of power. It also didn't blow the new fuse when I keyed on. So it looks like I will be trying to track down either broken wire or a bad connection.

 

Check all your connections from the coils back to the firewall along the same harness. I recently worked on an mr2 that had a timing belt replaced then was not getting spark. Turned out I found one of the contacts inside the connector going to the coil had slipped down too far and was not making contact. slipped that back up and boom spark baby.

 

Ok it looks like I was wrong. The blown fuse was the non-start problem. The maual said that the far left terminal should have 12v but it's actually the far right terminal. So whe I checked it before it looked like there was still no power and I simply didn't crank it long enough to start. Now it starts and runs however it still doesn't quite run right yet. It's idling high, though I've now discovered it's only idling high because I ave some tension on the throttle cable. If I let the throttle sit completely shut, the engine runs super rough and then dies. The cat on the exhaust manifold is still getting hot enough to glow (the manifold itself does not glow though) and the exhaust coming out the tailpipe feels hotter than I expect.

It is now throwing a code for the O2 sensor. The code says that there is no activity from the O2 sensor. This seems like quite the coincidence for the O2 sensor to go kaput right after a head/timing belt change. The manual says that there should be continuity between terminals 1 and 3 of the sensor and there is, but does that necessarily mean the sensor is good? I'd rather not buy a new sensor just to find out there's a different problem, ya know.

I think I will go back through and check for more bad fuses just in case, and if there's not, then I guess I'll replace the O2 sensor.

 

Reset the codes and see if it comes back. It would not surprise me in the least that the 02 sensor did get fried seeing how the mani was glowing and all before.

 

Yeah, I reset the code a couple of times and it continues to pop up. However, the exhaust gases are still really hot. It's still doing the glowing thing though I didn't describe it well beforehand. The actual manifold itself doesn't glow. At least not up by the head. The heat (glowing) seems to be concentrated where the cat (there is a cat integrated in the manifold right?) meets the downtube.

 

Still probably fried the 02 sensor esp if that code keeps coming back. Even if this isnt causing the glowing cat it is bad either way.