Total admission of inattentiveness, stupidity, etc. here, but have a question.
In the process of resealing the pump, I somehow was able to install the timing belt 180 degrees off. Cranked it up - low and behold it ran. Not very well, and with a LOT of white smoke. Tore it apart this morning, put the cam back into the right spot with timing and it runs as well as it did before. No apparent damage. I am guessing that there was no interference as the crank would put the pistons in the same place twice every cam rotation. The bottom end is in really good shape and I'm guessing it's got very good compression even though I've never measured it (only 80,000) miles. But, why did it even run?
Car is an '84 rabbit 1.6na