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so the students working on my car, out of pure genius took off the wrong cam when doing the friction gear springs. they tried to take off the cam with the pulley on it. long story short the cam is sticking in the air and the tensioner has tightened the belt so they cant get the cam to seat properly. they also tried to hit it with a mallet onto the head to force it back into its seat. best case scenario they have to do my timing belt and a bunch of other maintenance i was planning on doing later. the best part is i have a reading week off of school on march 5th. if they cant finish by then im going to be carless for an entire week of no school . worst case senario they have damaged the cam or the head and ill have to wait for the school to approve buying me new parts which could take up to a month, then probably another week or so to get it all back together. thats assuming kl31's can even be bought from the dealer or fixed...

all of this could have been avoided if my teacher let me jump back and forth between cars im working on. we work in groups, its not a big deal if i take off for 5min at a time and make sure everything is running smoothly. but according to my teacher it is.

ahh FML blame it on the EGR!

oh man, that is bad. Timing belt on the V6 inside the car is pretty intricate, I honestly would recommend you do it yourself, just have them disassemble the components to make your life easier.

you and me both. my teacher on the other hand wants me to stay with my current group. that car is hopefully almost finished, possibly sometime next week i can jump on my car. im hoping my teacher will be a bit more understanding of my desire to check in on my car from time to time. it was a completely stupid mistake that could have easily been avoided.

p.s. you should see my power steering belt. i knew it was bad, but when i looked at it today there was a 1.5" section of the ribs missing and cracks/chunks missing around the entire thing. i cant imagine the timing belt is much better. i think solo_ryder said he put atleast 100,000km on the engine since he swapped it in and he didnt touch any of the belts since.

Man, that stinks..... I just sold my ze cams a few days ago. I wish I knew because I could have hooked you up.

Why are you letting n00bs work on your car??? That's just asking for bad things to happen. You're essentially making your car a guinea pig for them. They should be working on some POS to start off and learn.

with any luck the cams and head are still in good shape. as far as im concerned it was caused by other students so the school is liable for any damage.

as for letting noobs work on the car, it started off as a small problem, just a vacuum leak. the problem is it was the vent for the pcv vacuum line on the back valve cover. not a huge deal but the intake manifold was blocking the clamp from getting the old hose off. to get at this we had to remove the intake. while waiting for the intake gasket i said f--- it lets swap my front valve cover gasket because it was leaking and i had the gasket already. my teacher then came over and said if we did the front we had to do the back. i then asked if i could do the friction springs because we already had everything off which he said was fine. then came the weekend. yesterday a part we were waiting for, on a car i was working on came in and my teacher made me go back with my old group (basically because they are all completely retarded). my teacher gave me s--- a couple times for jumping back to my car so i left it in there hands. when i left we had the front cam out, rear valve cover off and i thought i had pointed out to them enough times what needed to be done and what was happening. i guess i was wrong...

the reason i didnt want to do my timing belt now is i was waiting for my car to be finished, and so i could grab a couple of my friends who are good with cars to help. the 3 of us would have had no problem doing the timing belt and all the other work within a week and it would have been done properly. ill be lucky if they finish before reading week but im not holding my breath.

anyone know how much damage would be considered acceptable for a camshaft? im hoping minimal scratches would be alright? i havnt had a chance to take a look at it yet so who knows what the extent of the damage is... hopefully its fine

Any damage to the bearing surfaces can be a problem, but you mainly want to look at the edges of the cam lobes themselves. I'd keep an eye out for bending too, since they beat on it with a mallet... I'd have knocked their heads together for that one...

Our camshafts being cast don't tend to bend, they just snap, from experience. I've a had a variety of battered cams in my engines thanks to damage in transit, you'd be surprised what you can get away with. In one case the surface was that bad I had mine spray welded, it's still fine to this day.

If one of your cams is bad you will most likely not be able to find just one (past experience). A set, if you can find them, will most likely put you back 200.

I've a few kl31 spares after one of mine snapped and I bought a full second set. LMK how it goes.

so i got quite a bit of work done today. all the pullies are off, so is the water pump, alternator is off and new one is ready to go back in. got both sets of cams in, after cleaning up the minor scratches that were made when they tried to "fix" their mistake. goal for tomorrow is to put the alternator back in, mount the water pump, new pullies and hopefully get the timing belt mounted and set. by wednesday my new cam seals should be in and i can get those on, as well as the valve covers and intake as well as getting the timing cover back on and thursday will hopefully be left for any random left overs from the next 2 days. i also plan to remove my power steering pump and find out where a leak is coming from. its hard to tell but looks like its coming from the fitting on the banjo bolts, hopefully nothing major.

im also debating weather or not to get a new knock sensor while my intake is off... the wires were cut/crimped on the original and who knows what condition its in. its possible its detecting false knock and retarding the timing leading to my bad fuel mileage...

so the engine bay is starting to look closer to normal now. valve covers and the intake are back on. most of the coolant/vacuum lines are also back in. the timing belt is set and the covers are back on. all thats left for monday is to throw on the crank pulley/harmonic balancer, and throw on the power steering/alternator belts, fill the coolant and fine tune the timing with the disty. im hoping we didnt miss anything major and that it fires right up. if all goes well i should have my car for monday after school. im very excited to drive it after driving a caravan for a little over 2 weeks...

Caravans are not bad, if you get 3.3L one, they haul arse

its a 3.8l thats been beat to s---. check engine light is on, thermostat is stuck open, sometimes it refuses to up or down shift. it needs a tun of work and its not fun to drive at all. not to mention the $200+ in gas ive spent on it in a little over 2 weeks. i was wondering while driving it why manufacturers dont make 2.0L turbo diesel vans? theyd surely make enough torque to hall one around and i bet itd use a tun less fuel, especially on the highway.

it's because of north america's emissions standards. Modern diesels meet emissions however wasn't so some few years ago. Now it's because america's stubborn or something, I dunno.