I got everything put together yesterday, go to start the truck and the starter sounds like it's spinning freely. Not a normal cranking sound. The enginer turns over, every once in awhile I get a small backfire out the tail pipe, so I have spark. I turned over the engine by hand before everything, didn't feel anything touching, and I was really careful about lining up the timing dots, so I'm confident that the timing is correct. There are no nasty noises when the engine turns over. I'm wondering if I am not building compression? The rockers are the Vinci 1.8's, maybe they are adjusted too tight? I followed the directions given but some of the bolts were really tight. What do you guys think? I also get the smell of unburned fuel if I crank it for 4 or 5 seconds, so the injectors have to be working.

 

After everything was tightened did you check to see if you can turn the motor with a breaker bar or a wrench, Give your starter a couple of hit with a hammer, sometimes they get stuck. Oh and what cam are you using it might be that the valve might be kissing the piston. Did you install the rocker arm guide plates.

 

i think you need new sparkplugs

 

If you think the valves may not be going fully closed, which sounds like it could be the case, pull a valve cover and a spark plug and make sure you get one cylinder to tdc on the compression stroke. Slowly remove the rockers on that cyl and watch for movement of the valve going closed when loosening the rocker. I don't know if the vinci's are adjustable or not but if they arn't you will have to get a shorter pushrod.

 

I can turn the motor over by hand very easily. The starter turns the motor too, so it's not that. And I think that if a couple of plugs went bad I could get it to start but it wouldn't idle right. The cam is 210/218-551/551-116, 1.8 roller rockers, adjustable. I bought everything together from Vinci as a package so it should all work fine together. I'm going to pull the valve covers and plugs again I guess and start over on the adjustment. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Question about that though...the first time through there is a lengthy adjustment procedure, and the instructions say "All of this is necessary to allow the “relatively weak” stock valve springs to “bleed down” the hydraulic plunger in the lifter to allow proper lifter preload adjustment. If this procedure is not followed, valves could be “hanging open” when the engine is cranked over. This could result in bent valves. "

If I went through that already, can I just take off the rockers, start over and adjust them to 22 ft/lb's when that cylinder is TDC? Or do I have to go through the whole adjustment procedure again?

 

...and of course I did the swap on the Friday of a holiday weekend, so Vinci won't be open again until Tuesday

 

What I would do if I could not figure it out is quickly is swap the old rockers on, and see if it would start that way, should not take you that long. The rockers will work fine with that cam.

I dont know if you can just adjust the new rockers to 22ft/lb.

 

try this https://www.performancetrucks.net/fo...ight=cam+learn

 

it does sound like to much pre-load causing the valves to hang open. you can try re-adjusting the rockers per the vinci procedure or a quick verification by throwing the stockers back on and trying it from there.

 

Throw the stock ones back on.

BTW, is the backfire through the tailpipe and/or the intake?