Damn minivan! Technical help plzplz???
 

Hey all, I trust the folks on this board more than anywhere else, so I figured I'd toss out this call for help....

Enroute yesterday to get parts for my SVX restoration, I was driving my '89 plymouth voyager (mileage bucket) and as I was about a mile down the road, the van stalls. I quickly pull it into a driveway to be off the road, put it in park, and shut the ignition off. I try to crank it over just to see if it was a quirk, but it whirred over the same way it did when it chewed it's timing belt a month ago.

I think to myself "dammit, the belt went again?!" and pop the hood. I remove the top timing cover and get a look at the belt- belt seems fine and no missing teeth. So I leave the cover off, and luckily I had a friend with me to assist. "Watch the belt, tell me if it turns," I say. I crank it over a few times. "Yeah, uhh, it's moving. Actually, the whole gear is coming out of the motor."

"What?" I say. Sure enough, the camshaft sprocket had started to shimmy out of the head.

That means only one thing.

So I get the van towed back to my house, and sure enough, upon removal of the valve cover, I see what I had feared was the problem. Camshaft had snapped. Long story short after throwing together a possible howdid, I believe the oil, which had developed a severe leak out the side, didn't reach the camshaft, it starved of oil and seized in the head. there was a metal defect in the camshaft itself which I noticed at the breaking point. I manufacture harley cams all day, I can sniff out bad metal. It obviously wasn't bad enough to snap while properly lubed, but when a resistance was put on it at speed it just gave out. That's my theory anyways.

I've inspected the remaining pieces of the head, mainly the rollers and the clamps. The surfaces are usable, there was no serious wear.

So I trek out to my local Autozone, grab a camshaft, run down the street to the dealership to get the seals, get home and replace the shaft. All hunky dory.

Not.

I realize to myself as I go through the steps that the motor must be realigned to TDC to be able to properly set the cam position for timing. This is the very reason I farmed out the timing belt to a shop in town. The Chrysler 2.5L I-4 motors have the timing belt run around the left motor mount. To be able to set it to TDC according to them, you need to align the lower sprockets of the motor. That is the biggest royal PITA, and I really don't want to.

If my memory serves me right, I should be able to use some backyard methods to TDC the motor using a screwdriver on cylinder 1.

Can anyone give me some help on a good procedure to TDC and time the motor now?? For all those in the know, here's an awesome PDF file with diagrams for this motor.

http://www.obitet.gazi.edu.tr/Ydokuman/6.pdf

FYI, it's a 1989 Plymouth Voyager with a 2.5L Inline 4 Cyl motor, overhead cam. It is the turbo model.

PUUUHLEEEASE HEELP!
:)

-Sz

The cam gear actually came off the end of the cam(trashing the head and all related parts)....the crank pully did it once too.thats fixed but its got new problems somewhere else.