i recently had to replace my timing belt due to old one slipping due to buggered tensioner. to set timing to right place i had to use old belt to move gears around until the marks lined up. while doing this the gears would jump backwards or forwards pretty hard which i think has bent my valves. with the new belt on my engine will wind over with out any noises coming from the engine. can this happen if my valves are bent?? it will not start . i have check my compression which was zero basiclly but i don't trust my compression tester. this is my first zx but i really enjoyed driving it and want to get behind the wheel again . any help would be apprecated. thanks
The gears jumping around when moving the cam gears is normal. That wont damage the valves provided you aren't forcing them. When you say the old belt slipped, how bad? 1 tooth or did it do it properly? That would def bend your valves.
Yeah my old motor suffered a case of bent valves after some numbnutz left a speed nut in my timing covers, causing the belt to jump around. Pretty sure you need to do a leak down test to find out if valves are sealing or not? Oh and for OP in my case yes the motor started and ran once the timing was corrected but was noticeably down on power and very noisy.
I'll just chime in here and say a similar thing happened to me. It seems that whoever replaced the timing belt (before I bought it; it was def done as it was a gates belt on there) re used the tensioner I had what sounded like a knocking noise too. When I pulled it down to do another 100k service I found that the belt hadn't actually slipped any teeth (I counted teeth between the markings on the gears). Basically the noise was the belt flapping and hitting the timing cover/s due to excess slack. Is the CAS connector on properly? If not you won't have fuel or spark. Did you unplug any fuses/relays (specifically for the fuel pump)? ^May not be relevant but doesn't take long to check anyway.
Just letting you know that you can still get fuel AND spark when the CAS connector is not on properly.