New stroker cranks but won't start

[vashxj]

this might not have anything to do with the jeep but try that code reader on a different car ive seen them do weird things before and if your battery isnt fully charged it can mess with scanner

[bulfo4]

Hey VashXJ, good call, we tried it on my wife's 98 ZJ and that works fine. You could be right on the weak battery causing it. I'll try again now that it's recharged.

So, here's the update. We were off by a tooth after all. I'd swear we were dead on at 5 o'clock and TDC, and we were pretty consistent, so my guess is somehow our method was just consistently wrong, maybe we didn't gauge something right. Who knows.

Anyhow, it fired up and runs reasonably smooth, but fairly loud without the hood on there. I haven't driven the thing in like 4 months, so maybe I just forgot what it sounds like.

We kept having it overheat and I think we've narrowed that down to using too much gasket maker on the thermostat and gasketing the thing to where it wouldn't open. So we removed it and put the housing back on, and that seems to help, but now I think the upper radiator hose is leaking.

The next obstacle is that it doesn't seem to charge the battery up very well yet. I'm sure there's a procedure for troubleshooting that (alternator is brand new)

It's almost broken in now, so we can drive it and see what else doesn't work.

Thanks everyone for the help!

[SilverXJ]

Check the voltage while it is running. Should be around 13.5-14 volts. If its that then its probably the battery. Check the ground, terminals, and cables as well. I don't remember if your alternator has the kind of plug with bolts, or a positive wire with a bolt and then a separate plug. Make sure its all plugged in right and if it had teh plug make sure its in.

If its not getting 13.5-14 while running you can full field the alternator. You will have to apply positive voltage to the plug or terminal on the alternator, but only for a few seconds. Have your multi meter hooked up first and watch to see if it spikes to around 17 volts.

[vashxj]

ya we had one of our drb's at work mess up one day and holy crap that one confused all of us. til someone thought to try another one lol we spent like an hour and a half trying to figure out a no communication problem.

[SilverXJ]

I bought a scanner off ebay once. I didn't realize it was coming from Taiwan. Big mistake. It acted like it was communicating but even with a code stored it told you there were no codes.

[bulfo4]

Haven't had a chance to get the meter on to check the alternator, but we verified that the battery's at 100% and working well. Doublechecked grounds everywhere again and plugs. The Alternator's plugged in solid and it's totally new. I'll see if I can check it tomorrow.

Learning Experience: The plot thickens...
We did find out that in March, NAPA sold us a distributor that at first glance looked fine, but was in fact different from the correct one. We kept hearing about putting a pin or a toothpick up through the bottom hole into the plastic ring's hole to align it correctly, and this one didn't have that plastic ring at all. Didn't look broken, and I guess I got lucky enough the first time I installed it on the previous engine, or so I thought. We put in the new distributor in March, and in April, either it was running bad or throwing a code (can't remember which), which led us back to the cam sensor. So I went back to NAPA and bought another one (since the one we'd used was a little marked up and they're not supposed to take back electronics). Put that in, engine runs worse. Finally take it to a shop and they said the compression was way off on cylinder #2, and we may have a blown head gasket. We pulled the head, and the gasket was fine, but the valves in #2 were way gummed up and wouldn't seal. NAPA's machine shop basically said if they fixed the head and the valves, it would put so much pressure on the block, we'd need to do the block too or we'd be back in about a year with the block worn out. Which led us to replacing the engine, and the stroker. So, could a bad distributor / cam sensor or an improperly aligned distributor have caused any of this? Don't know. I went back into NAPA today and for curiosity, had them pull up the distributor for a jeep like mine, and it has that alignment ring! They don't have my warranty info on file, can't look up my purchase history, (or anything else useful), and thank goodness I still had the receipt. So I brought back in their wrong distributor and the extra cam sensor I'd bought and they swapped the distributor and refunded the $40 for the cam sensor. I was so p.o.'ed when I went back in there i think my skin was about to turn green. It's probably not their fault, and with very little knowledge, no training, or parts counter experience, *I* should have caught it the first time, but I can't help but be a little frustrated that even if the whole trashed engine isn't related, today I'm having to jump through a bunch of hoops to fix what feels like their mistake. Oh well. Live and learn. They're human. I'm human. We all make mistakes - thank goodness it wasn't brain surgery. Trying to be zen about it.

The net of that (other than venting and I know to check parts more closely), is the correct distributor's in there now, and 1. it still won't start without a LOT of cranking, 2. it runs (and drives pretty well!) above about 1,000 rpm but dies at idle in any gear, and 3. the harbor freight scan tool isn't reading the pcm. Seems like if the battery has a charge, the alternator's probably doing what it's supposed to do.

Tomorrow I'm going to look for - dying at idle, hard starting, and anything that keeps the code readers from working.

Thanks AGAIN, you guys are great!

Side question: Anyone had to change their PCM when doing a stroker? Not like being picky and super-tuning it, just getting a good, solid running Jeep.

[vashxj]

what throttle body do you have on your stroker

[bulfo4]

Right now it's the stock throttle body. Was going to upgrade but haven't yet. Figured that's about the easiest thing to do afterwards. Think that could be it?

[SilverXJ]

Have you checked your fuel pressure?

[bulfo4]

We checked the fuel pressure when it first wasn't starting and with the ignition on but not canning it was 49. I had to rent a gauge for that one so it's been retuned by now. Do you think it could drop once its cranking, and of so what should I look for from there? The fuel pump and pressure regulator have both been replaced within about the last year or so.

[vashxj]

i would say to take the tb off and clean it really good and make sure the iac housing is really clean to

[jeep7081]

I am having same issue. I hope OP sees this and post to help out. You state you were off a tooth? On the distributor or the timing gears (mark)? How did you know?

Thanks

[bulfo4]

Hey Jeep7081,

Sorry you're having similar issues.

We wound up being off by a tooth on the distributor because the one NAPA sold us didn't have that hole you put the pin or allen wrench through to keep things lined up correctly. The teeth on the timing were set by the engine rebuilder so we were pretty sure those were correct since he does that all the time. When we re-built it later (see below), we it ran decent, but not great and we thought it might have been the timing gears so we opened it up to check and they were correctly aligned and the chain was in good shape. The two marks on the gears were lined up perfectly and when we pulled the chain off and compared it to a brand new one from Autozone there was no difference in the length. We had a LOT of issues stemming from the distributor being off. I'm no mechanic at all, so my knowledge in this area is...well, what it is. There are a lot of good directions out there for how to install distributors and I know if it's off by a tooth it will run really, really poorly. Because the ECU controls a huge amount of the timing, my understanding is where on a conventional distributor you could fine tune the timing, with ours it pretty much takes care of that. My question is how much does it correct? If there's an ideal timing we should be aiming for, but the computer will accept it if we're off by a little bit, what's the tolerance for being off before the computer just can't compensate anymore?

Looks like I was bad and didn't finish our updates. We finally got the thing running and it was decent but underpowered. We had taken out the 24lb injectors and put back in the stock ones at some point, so we put the 24lb injectors back in, but we didn't flush them out which led to an injector sticking. With the new injectors it ran much better, more power, etc., but we gas-washed a cylinder and basically had to go back to square minus 5 (worse than when we bought the engine). The block was saved, and we got a new piston, new rings, etc. and rebuilt the whole thing ourselves this time. By January we finally got it running again. Some minor tweaks and it runs pretty decent. It's my DD so we had to break it back in and then live with it for a few months. I took it to a 4x4 shop a few weeks ago for them to look at it as we're still not totally satisfied with how it's running and should find out soon what their take is on it.

Hope that helps,
Tom