Hello everyone. I'm new here, but not to these old be diesels. I'm currently stumped at the moment, trying to get my 81 Rabbit to run property.
Here is some history on the car. The whole car was restored along with the engine and transmission about 10 years ago by myself. The engine was gone through with great care. The car has been a daily driver more or less since then, racking up over 100,000+ miles since then to this day. About 3 years ago, around 60-70,000 miles I lost the timing belt due to a failed intermediate shaft pulley. I had the head reworked with new valves ect. I encountered issues with combustion gases in the coolant, followed by oil getting in the coolant. He head was off multiple times going back to the machine shop to be checked. We were in the middle of a move to another state at this time, so I gave up and just drove the car.
Recently after dealing with chronic hose swelling and occasional failures. I decided to fix it. I pulled the head from a spare engine I have and had it reworked. I adjusted the valves myself rather than having the machine shop do it . I didn't want them grinding the end of the valve, since I have a collection of the proper shims. I used a set of ARP head studs this time. I put everything back together, timed the engine and now it is running like crap. It ran great before. I did make one mistake during the process. I did not put the engine in time when I took it apart. This has not ever been a problem in the past. I did run into one bit of confusion during the process. I was confused on the orientation of the pulley on the fuel pump. After referencing the Bentley, I found the timing mark on the pulley. After timing the engine properly, I checked the timing. I found for some reason it was too advanced. To the best of my memory I set it around 0.98mm.
I found it was set at 1.15mm. I adjusted it back to 0.98mm and started the engine. It ran very poorly. Heavy greyish smoke and the engine was missing, especially when it was run at more than an idle. I checked timing again and found it to be spot on. The only thing I was questioning was the orientation of the pulley on the fuel pump. Thinking I had the pump 180 degrees out of phase, I rotated the pulley 180 degrees and retimed the engine again. This time the engine still runs like crap, billows black smoke, has a heavy diesel knock and no power. I retarded the timing to 0.88mm with almost no effect. Any ideas? I'm about to just build another engine and forget this one.
Thanks