S13 Ka dead....

[chituntang]

Ok. My brother's S13 died on the way to my house, before he went off the FLA. I promised to fix his car for him. Anyways, I asked a friend to crank the car for me and I found there were no sparks from the first three spark plug wires, so I thought it is the distributor. I got a remanu. unit, along with the new rotor. I took off the valve cover and reset the timing (making the dots line up with the two special marked chain) and then line up the dis and put it back in. I put everything back together and the car started for about 30sec and it died on its own. I pushed the gas pedal but the car did not response. I also had a few question during the install.

1. The two front bolt for the valve cover does not hold for some reasons. I can keep turning my wrench.
2. I cannot take off the metal cover inside the distributor. Does it do anything?


Please help!!!

Thanks in advance
Jesse

[greddyguy]

what made you think the timeing chain was off? its pretty much impossible.


your bolt holes are probably STRIPPED.


you shouldnt need to take that cover off

[jspec240]

I second that motion. ^^^ all you had to do was get a timing light. is the ecu throwing any codes??

[WangonwWarrior]

I third this and its probably the ignitor or something, always test before you start throwing parts at it

[chituntang]

I took the valve cover off because I forgot to mark the dis. position when I pulled it off. That's why I reset the timing. Well, the car did start after I changed the distributor and rotor, just that when I finally had the car started, I can rev it up. It would stay at about 500rpm and die after 30secs. I never thought of the ignitor, so I did not check it.

I did not mean by anyway my timing chain was off. I pulled the distributor out without marking its position, so I reset the timing (plus the car had really bad mpg, worse than my SR before, that's why I reset it). Threads are gone, I will just have to use something else to hold it.

Update.

I got the car to idle now, but it sounds really bad. I turned the distributor clockwise all the way and it sounded better. But I cannot rev up the engine smoothly. When I pull the throttle, the car would wait for half a sec, and slowly revs up. And as soon as I let go, the engine would die.