Snow drift + no timing belt cover = trouble

[mardak at cogeco.ca (Mark)]

Well I now know the perils of not running a timing belt cover when you
live in a snow belt.  The other night, in order to get into my parking
spot at home, I had to blast through a pretty sizable snow drift.  It
instantly stalled, and wouldn?t start.

Tried again in the morning, nada...  Checked the intake for snow - sure
enough my swiss-cheesed airbox (relocated behind the passenger side
headlights) was packed with snow right up to the filter.  Thinking this
was the problem I removed the snow and cranked it over till the battery
died...   So I got a friend of mine to pull me down the street with his
car and tried to bum-start it, thinking that a bunch of moisture was
fouling my starting attempts.  Something was off, it sounded weird...
Checked for spark, fine...  Hmmmm...

So on a hunch I checked my valve timing - yup - it was off by around
four teeth.  Hoping I didn't bend all the new valves I put into my
recently rebuilt done-up head, I realigned everything and fired it up.
So far so good, everything seems alright...  Now I have to tune the damn
thing again, which was a major PITA last time - I had to screw around
with different combinations of cam (adjustable) and spark timing to get
decent power without pinging.  Oh well, at least it ain't broke!

Lesson learned...

Mark.
75
80 S
81 S  2.0 ABA/JH/4K


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