Tranny swap to confused
 

I busted my tranny last week So done the swap this weekend, put new clutch pess. plate and so on. Running fine when i put it in my garage, Got finished late tonight go to crank it up and it sounded really bad. Like i had a monster huge cam in it!!!! I have a 83 n/a bone stock. It chugged for about 3-4 mins and the fuel light came on then died. now it wont crank up at all. Sounds like it wants to start up but it wont. The fuel light stays on. I have a spark in 1 and 2, didnt check the rest and i have plenty of fuel press out of the top of the fuel filter. one thing i noticed is there is some oil on my plugs. Ineed help this is my DD. I have to drive the wifeys car tomorrow to work.

Did you check everything you touched? All efi plugs securely connected? My first clutch job I forgot to hook up the CHTS and it fouled out pretty quick. :D

go the ground and starter hooked up right? lol

check your ground like snow said. also is the battery kinda dead? maybe charge it a bit too. what else would you have touched tho? i cant think of anything else. the fuel light is on, are there any others like the batt. light?

only the fuel light. Now the batt is starting to go dead with 2 days of cranking ill charge it over night. And the starter is fine i never disconnected it just the ground wire.

I rechecked all plugs and everything i touched. Ima noob to forum lingo so what is CHTS? Their was only 2 wires hooked to the tranny and i think it was the reverse hook up. Right?? I didnt touch anything. The only thing that happened was wyhen i was trying to take the exhaust off i broke a bolt off and now there is a leak at the front of cat, You think that could be the reason??

CHTS = cylinder head temp. sensor. its the sensor on your passenger side of the head towards teh rear by cylinder 5 and 4 i think. also, how could you swap a tranny without removing the starter?

well i took it off the tranny but never disconnected any wires only the ground i just kinda tied it up with a tie strap so it wouldn't dangle but rechecked and all is fine with starter. i have worked on cars and Datsun / Nissan for years this has me really confused.All was fine until tranny swap. and no signs before of anything going bad. was thinking of doing so AFM cleaning and now im glad i didnt because then i would have thought that i F-D up the AFM.:fenforcer: :fenforcer:

I believe he's thinking you may have bumped the CHTS while working on the starter. If the leak at the cat is bad enough, it could make the car sound pretty lopey.

1. Is it as quiet as it was before the swap, but just lopey?

2. Or is it much louder than it was before the swap?

If #1, you have a mystery. If #2, then you just have a big exhaust leak. This will also change the way the motor runs since it will idle better with the "proper" amount of exhaust back pressure.

ok i pulled all plugs and the where caked with oily residue and not firing well. on 3 of the 6 cylinders. So replaced all plugs fired up but ran like elephant s**t:fripper: so i held at 2 to 3 rmp for about 2 mins pulled plugs and had the same residue on them but not as bad. So cleaned plugs and done again ran at about 3 grand for 5 mins or so until died could hold throttle wide open would die couldnot let off throttle would die. then eventually died noticed a glare from under car and the exhaust was glowing bright as hell all the way back SCARED the s**t out off me:paranoid: :paranoid: I couldn't tell if it was forward of the cat but cat and back was bright as a cig lighter.

update: i took the cat off and im in the process of gutting it out . Im thinking that would make the exhause glow like that. Im pretty shore ( correct my if im wrong) if it is the timing, it would be the manifold glowing right???:012: :012: but it was red starting at the cat all the way back to the tip of muffler :033: :033: ... So with the cat off, I it fired up but ran like shit ( due to lack of back pressure right????) This really has me stumped because it was running perfect before i changed the tranny. Im gonna put the cat back on when all is cleaned out. Any advise would help or has anyone else seen this happen??

SOunds like gutting the cat isn't going ot help you. The glowing exhaust would bwe from the Cat doing it's job and burning off the uunburnt fuel in the exhaust system. The problem is you're not burning the fuel in the cylinders like it's supposed to. Either bad spark, timing way off, wrong firing order, or extremely low compression would be the place to start. IF it was a plugged up cat, it should have run better once you removed it.

pretty sure i thought clowing exhaust was from a lean condition. but check the timing. and check your spelling. that second to last post of yours was alomst impossible to understand

how could my timing have got off?? i never touched it. Im not saying that isnt the prob ill put a timing light on it tomorrow.

Well when i removed the cat it fired right up, but it was not smooth and it still wouldn't accelerate like it should really rough. the motor shakes and the air filter box has a really deep roar when you try to rev the car up. it roars and the engine dies.

well, your sure its oil on the plugs? other wise the motor is getting flooded if its just gas. if its oil, you got other issues. such as shot rings or super leaky valves. or BHG. do you have a compression tester? id say give it a whirl to make sure its still at a decent compression in all the cylinders.

When you changed the plugs did you do them one at a time, or all at once? I'm just trying to make sure you got the firing order correct still.

ya 1 at a time:armata_PDT_03: im not gonna have to much time to work on it today I just closed on my home Friday so im moving and getting this and buying that. man this is the worst time the 280 could've let me down:armata_PDT_35: :armata_PDT_35: i gutted the cat at work. so ill prolly put that back on tomorrow or Wednesday

no im not sure it is oil it could be fuel.it does reak of gas but it has a very slick and "pastey" feel to it. Ill take some pics of the plugs before i fired it up again. Would this help you??

Got all your tools/pets accounted for?..did you check inside bell housing?

seriously now, can you describe car behavior that led to: I busted my tranny last week.
for sure engine was way hot all the way to the resting place, something that obviously you can not accomplish right know

YA thats the thing it was running PERFECT to the T when i pulled in the garage it had a like a 1/8th of a tank of fuel. So when the R and R of tranny was done i cranked it up and it was running like shit. So i thought it was low on fuel so went to pick up 4 more gallons of fuel, dumped it in and no help. So now i have the cat gutted and im going to buy a timing light. ill let you know how it runs shortly

How is it possible to get off timing when nothing was touched in the engine bay???????
The only time i was up there was when i took the 2 bell housing bolts off the top of the tranny. Starter was removed from under the car.

ok ran compression test on 1 2 and 3 before the batt died. All 3 had 150 psi or plus, ill test the other 3 tomorrow. I did notice something though i dont know if it is normal or not. i took all the plugs out and disconnected the wire going to the coil on the driver side fender. When my buddy turned the car the spark ran out of the front part of coil onto the bracket holding on the coil and to the nuts on the front of the coil. Is this right??

so is this normal for the spark to run out of the coil when cranking the car.

if the wire was unplugged from it yes. if you left the spark plug boot/wire on it still then no it shoulda came out from where the other end of the spark wire was.