Called to non-start.

Head had been replaced by owner after suspected head gasket failure

Now it wont start. It is injecting fuel and has that "About to start" type sound but wont actually catch. Use of the dreaded easy start does NOT result in a brief run, just sounds much the same as with without though perhaps with a bit more enthusiasim.

My first thought was cam chain a tooth out. The TDC marks on the cam pulley do not line up like the book when the crank is at TDC. (It looks about a tooth "Late" )

(The injection pump is gear driven from the crankshaft and the bottom half of the engine has not been disturbed so I cannot see how the pump timing might have been upset)

And this is where it gets interesting...

If I set the cam to what looks like the correct TDC position (Pully locating peg at 12:00), the crank will not go to tdc without contacting the valves! There is only one tooth where the engine turnes freely and it doesnt look right.

Of course the big problem here is the fact that I am trying to sort out somebody else mess so do not know whether I am looking at a "Fault", An "Error" or a dogey new part (New head from Karuma heads if anybody has heard of them) and never got to see what the timing marks looked like when everything was working fine!

Now, before I advise the customer to pull his engine to pieces again so I can chek various internal things does anybody have any other suggstions as to what might be the problem.


(As an aside, the gearing on this set up makes the camshaft turn the "Wrong way" which actually looks really spooky when you are turning the crankshaft!)