Timing Issue (Video/Audio)?

Ok, so if you’ve snooped around my other threads, I recently had my head re-done, after a failed head swap. This swap was a replacement swap B18A1 for B18A1. The guy that sold it to me via craigslist, well just lied about it being a bolt and go head and it had no compression.

So I grabbed my old head, had a valve job done on it, cleaned all the valves, cleaned the head, resurfaced it, and replaced the valve steam seals. It runs (and smokes) exactly as it did before.

My idle is good (not great, a little high IMO) at around 900RPMs. I don’t have any codes displayed.

I’ve provided a short video of my idle (it’s at night so the audio is more important here), so that you guys can give me your input on whether or not my timing is off or if there is another issue here.

Other symptoms include massive amounts of blue smoke and oil residue on my rear end at WOT, a loss of power before 2,500 RPM, and less smoking at idle. I also have a crack in my header between the cylinder one and two collection points. At the “Y” if I may.

Previous owner stated timing belt was replaced around 100,000 miles and I have about 154,000 on it now. So thoughts, opinions. Rings? Timing? Something else?

//youtu.be/n0SL64WQJLw

Tons of blue smoke = burning oil

Could be bad rings…

Just because the head was serviced doesn’t mean that the problem is solved… As mentioned, the rings in the block could be bad, resulting in blow-by and smoking.

Do a compression and/or leakdown test, see where the internal leak is coming from.

Did a compression test and leak down. Both turned out superb. So I’m still confused.

EDIT: Compression results were in the 172-180 PSI range and the leak down returned less than 5% on all cylinders.

What the hell is that slapping sound? Definitely doesn’t sound like normal engine operation.

I agree. The slapping sound is just my exhaust note. The pattern or rhythm of the exhaust is what I’m asking about. I would like to get opinions on whether or not this sounds like an engine out of time or something else.

Hard to tell from the video, then.

Just re-time it if you think it’s incorrect.

If you say there is “massive” amounts of smoke and power loss at a certain RPM range, and compression/leak-down are good, then yes I’d suspect a timing issue.

How’s the valve lash?

Valve lash was done within specs on the hood, since I still have the sticker. I double checked with the service manual and they were correct.

I may just end up throwing a timing light on it tomorrow at work. See what sort of reading I get off of that.