car still wont start ... whats wrong?!

[alves at email.unc.edu (Carlos Alves)]

Ok all,

I spent a good 3 hours yesterday at night trying to fix this damn 
problem, and im gonna take another shot at it at around 1 in the 
daylight. Here is what happened.

Just a simple cap and rotor change, the timing belt WAS left on to the 
car. Changed the old rotor wit hthe new Bosch one, put the cap on, and 
put the plugs on and tried to start the car, but it didn't fire. I then 
tried removing the new rotor but the damn thing was stuck to the shaft, 
and when I tried removing it with force, it snapped in two, so I put 
the old rotor back on.  The rotor is currently pointing DOWN. Now, I 
put the cap back on, and reconnected the plugs in 1 3 42 CCW firing 
order, assuming that the first plug was in the 2 o clock position, and 
the car didnt fire. I moved around the number one plug 4 times, in 
every other possible position, and every single time, the car would not 
start, it just kept on cranking. When I would get back to the engien 
bay, it smelled like gas. I disconnected the center ignition coil on 
the distributor cap and ran a spark test, and there was a spark coming 
from the coil. I Then put it back on, tried starting it, only to no 
avail. However, oddly enough, when the plugs were in a certain 
position, the car would backfire while trying to start... what does 
that mean?!

I have no idea what to do from here. My car was correctly timed (to my 
knowleadge, it wa running smoothly) so I should not need to worry about 
aligning the camshaft with TDC, right? Perhaps I accidentally unplugged 
a crucial connection while trying to remove and swap the cap and rotor? 
I have no idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated ... I am starting 
to get extremley frustrated. REplacing the cap and rotor shouldn't be a 
3 hour job. 



Faster than a speeding pinto...... 
Coches