larry_in_socal

All, from my last thread, I do get some compression, but no oil pressure. I cranked the engine, spark plugs removed, cranked for over a minute, no oil pressure. So I took off the oil pressure sender to pour some oil down through the galleys, I tried to pour some oil but the oil sender hole fills up and I can't pour any more oil, and it only takes about a small "salsa" container full of oil anyway. So I figured, let's start at the oil filter housing. The oil filter is next inline after the oil pump, so I took off the oil filter housing, and there was absolutely no oil in the passage from the pump to the filter housing. so all this time I have been cranking the engine, no oil was being sucked by the pump... I don't want to damage the motor by cranking the motor any more than I need to without any oil so I guess my next plan of action is to pull the engine. I have no choice as I do not want to Fubar the engine just attempting to prime for oil. who knows it is possible that the oil pump sprocket nut came off, or the pickup tube is completely clogged.. anyway that is what I decided... It's scary to turn over the engine, and crank for over a minute and no oil at all, not even at the oil filter housing, so something is causing the pump not to suck... haha ... so now down the rabbit hole I go... wish me luck.... I'm planning on pulling it this weekend... Larry F in Ca.

Update.... Installed new starter to run compression test again. Before I ran the test, I put engine at TDC on cylinder 1, turned the engine so that the distributor rotor was between cylinder 1 and cylinder 2, and checked that all 4 pistons had some "room" from piston top and spark plug hole. I did this to basically attempt to have all 4 cylinders somewhere in the middle of their stroke, and I squirted some MMO down each spark plug hole. I let the MMO sit overnight and tested compression again. Here is what I'm now getting: Cylinder 1: 60 PSI Cylinder 2: 15 PSI Cylinder 3: 45 PSI Cylinder 4: 55 PSI During my test, I let the (new starter) crank over about 5 seconds, or at least I counted about 10 cranks... this starter sounds really smooth as compared to the original, so that is good... However what I'm stuck on is that the OIL light on the dash never turned off. Is it quite possible that my OIL sensor is not functioning? I'll start looking at that, so even with a bad OIL pressure sensor, I should still be getting oil at the top of the head when cranking for 5 seconds or so, right? Realize that I did do an oil change, but I didn't drop the oil pan, so what I'm saying is that it is quite possible that there is still a bunch of crud on the oil pickup, and this might be the reason for the OIL light to remain on, if there is no oil being sucked up by a clogged OIL pickup tube. Also when I did the oil change, I did not fill the oil filter with oil, would this cause no oil pressure ? How much cranking do I need to get oil to come up to the top ? so here is my next plan: 1) test to make sure I'm getting oil circulating (how do you prime an oil pump?) 2) perhaps drain the oil again, and drop the oil pan, to get all the gunk from the pickup. Can the oil pan be removed with the engine in the car? 3) do several more MMO overnight to free up the rings some more. Any thoughts?? -- Larry F in Ca.

Worzella, Yea....That’s good stuff. Definitely where I need my car to be. That’s a really nice timing light. I have one from good ole HB... once I get this engine to run I can invest in better equipment, for now I’m just getting the basics down. Spark, fuel and compression. I’m really bummed out over the compression or rather lack of.. but I’ll soldier on to get this car running this summer. I appreciate working on this knowing that I have support from the on-line community here. i plan to get back to the car when I return home this Friday... Larry F in Ca

All, thanks for the advise.. i decided that it would be best to get a new starter, so I have one on its way. as for the compression test, i will work on that next weekend. I have removed my starter and will sand down all the electrical connection points for the grounds. I ordered one of those endoscope USB from amazon (with led at the end) but i couldn't get it working. i wanted to use it to check timing marks, but my cell phone worked just fine.. now that I think of it I should have waited to crank the engine over, because I don't want to damage the rings by turning over the engine with the starter. Anyway can't go back now... Anyway, my next plan of action is to soak the pistons (making sure that the pistons are somewhere in the middle of rotation and not on TDC, and use some MMO to get those rings (and rust) if any to loosen up. I just hope that I didn't damage the rings by jumping the gun and trying to check compression. If it doesn't check compression with the new starter, and the MMO, then I will be taking the engine out for further inspection. Larry F in Ca.

Worzella, yep.. great fun... I only checked cylinder one, both exhaust and intake .07, and it seems good. I'm now on to checking compression.. so I started a new thread. Larry F.

I've been scratching my head on this one.... I just thought of something, I placed a piece of cardboard at the carburetor port so that nothing foreign, dirt gets sucked down in the intake. (see attached). I'm surfing the web and many discussions about doing a compression test states that it is a two person job and to have the person inside put their foot all the way down on the throttle. I guess this is to allow as much air to get into the cylinders as possible. So would you agree that if a someone incredibly stupid....... LOL, "like myself" .. haha...... puts a piece of cardboard (to prevent dirt from getting into the intake) that "that" same piece of cardboard would prevent air from getting in the cylinder for a proper compression test ?? What do you think ?

All, as my previous post shows, I was checking for timing marks, and I think that I have that under control. Realize that this car hasn't run in over 20 years... Little bit of a back story.. in the late 90's yes, late 90's I had the car towed to a friends house to see if he could get it running, he never did ( I don't think he did anything to it), so I ended up having it towed back to my parents house.. however life took over, I got married, three kids, car ended up getting stored at my current home. I attempted to get it running in the past, but got sort of discouraged, the kids took over my finances. Well that is over no more college to support..so here we are fast forward 2021... So my previous post, timing marks look good, check. My next plan of action was to do an oil change, Done. (20w50) and a decent oil filter.. just to get it running. Oil change done.... So my next task is checking for Compression. But before my compression test, I needed a battery, So I bought a Group 26R battery from Sam's Club, it was on sale for about $79 bucks, since no core, It ended up costing $110, after tax.. I don't think that is too bad of a price, and it has a 3 year warranty. So a new battery (Duracell - 665 / 540 CCA) which I think would be good enough to at least get the car running. Now here is where I'm running into trouble. I ran compression tests across all cylinders, and here is what I got: Cylinder 1 0 PSI Cylinder 2 0 PSI Cylinder 3 0 PSI Cylinder 4 25 PSI I don't think that this engine is DOA, and I'm almost positive that it had decent compression years ago. I'm only using the battery for my compression test , as I have the alternator disconnected, (getting the bushings) and a new belt. The starter seems to not be cranking as it should, and sort of seems to be draining the battery. (and yes this could very well be caused by not having an alternator attached) But, really? this is a brand new battery, it should be spinning this starter like no tomorrow. It doesn't even spin it fast enough to turn the "oil" light on the dash off, so it might not be spinning enough. I suspect that my starter might be going out, and it sounds like it is not "winding" like it should. So do you think that even with a new battery, super old starter, that I should be getting some sort of compression? I'm not getting any PSI readings on three cylinders, and it is quite possible that the valves are all out of wack... I tested cylinder 1 both Exhaust and Intake at TDC, and I was able to fit a .007 feeler in both the exhaust and intake rocker arm adjustment locations. the starter sounds like it is on its way out and is not cranking as a normal starter. Could this be my issue checking for compression ?

All, I followed the advise here and as shown, it looks like my engine is all timed up correctly. 1) The "TO" Line is inline with ridge on flywheel timing inspection hole, done. 2) the dam timing mark is at the oil pump bar, done. 3) the Distributor Rotor is pointing at the mark on distributor rim, done. I didn't check the flywheel as I got side tracked with running a compression test..

Worzella, I think you and I have the same crank pulley. My car is a 75 with AC, Water-pump and Smog-pump running off the same pulley. The Belt you see in the pictures that I attached is going down to the smog pump. I took out the water pump belt, Rad Fan and Alternator so that I could get a better access to the crank bolt. As I didn't even know if the engine would turn over. I put a small amount of transmission fluid (a water bottle cap full) in each cylinder, and the motor turns, no odd sounds and super smooth. I don't want to get ahead of myself.. but now that I have a fresh new battery, I'll run compression tests, research the timing marks, etc. I have the resistor wire (speaker wire) on the coil lead so I purchased a NOS 221-119-021Black Ignition Coil that requires the .9 ohm resistor, which is what I read I need, due to the "built-in" speaker wire resistor wire at the coil positive lead. Anyway, If I get good compression, which I think I should, I'll continue with the timing portion, just to check that everything is in time and then work on getting a solid spark.. the car had a blue coil which I think was the wrong coil for this car all along. First things first.. Oh and did I mention, I'm going to do a quick oil change, get that 20 year old oil out of her, and get some fresh oil in to start the compression tests... I have a graduation party to go to this weekend, but my goal is to at least run some solid compression tests as a foundation to start digging deeper. The drama continues....

Wow, thanks for all the replies.. Here's my plan and I need to check static timing first. 1) place flywheel at the TO mark (with the Straight line) at the ridge of the timing inspection hole. 2) remove the valve cover (check for the Cam Mark to be in the middle of the Oil Spray Bar. 3) remove the distributor cover, check to see that the rotor is pointing at the mark on cylinder 1. 4) if the mark at the distributor is off, then I could be 180 degrees off and rotate the fly wheel again till the TO mark appears again. Do all of that without even looking at the crank pulley. Just get everything at TDC, Flywheel TO mark, Cam Mark, Distributor mark, and verify that the rockers on cylinder 1 are loose. This should get me at a point that the car should fire up, or at least bump the distributor 3 degrees back (as the book states that the static timing should be 3 degrees). Just getting the car to this point first would tell me that the car cam and crank and distributor are all in time. and the book stating that the static time should be 3 degrees, I think that would be a slight ever so slight twist of the distributor just to get the car running at idle.. Once the car idles and runs, then I would need to concentrate on the RPM / BB mark to basically advance the timing to the RPM relationship. I would imagine that the advance and dynamic timing is needed for a 1975 car due to the latency in the mechanical points releasing the spark at the right time for a given rpm. for now I will concentrate on getting the Flywheel TO mark, Cam Mark and the distributor mark all at the TDC. (I'll make a note to where the crank marks are, but technically speaking they could be off and to rely on the Flywheel mark to set dynamic timing). Also since the Flywheel has a larger size then when compared to the crank pulley, it has more finite levels of adjust ability when looking at it through a timing light. In other words it's best to time off the flywheel. Again, thanks for all your help and support. Larry F in Ca.

Hello, I have decided that this is the year that my '02 runs. I have been storing this under a tarp and car cover for over 20 years and I have decided that this is the year that I start working on the car. First of all I was able to get the engine to turn, as it has been sitting for years. my plan of action is to check compression, and when I last checked it did have decent compression. i bought it from a friend years ago and before he sold it to me he had the engine rebuilt, however I suspect that whoever rebuilt the engine might have timed the engine wrong. It was running when my friend picked it up from his mechanic but it never ran right after that. so here I am in 2021 trying to get this car back to life. As the attached pictures show there are two notches in the back of the crank pulley as shown, however there are marks at the front of the pulley as shown in the first picture. What is throwing me off is that with either the steel ball in the flywheel or the OT Mark, nothing lines up. My question is that it it quite possible that the "inner" marks closes to the engine, could those marks have been created by the mechanic? The inner marks do have pretty deep groves and seem to be set by the factory, but where on the engine do they get aligned to? They are too close to the engine to use the timing pointer, and is it possible that perhaps the pulley was put on wrong? Put on backwards? if you see the first picture with the outer marks, when I align that mark to the metal timing pointer, the second inner mark (in relation to the first inner mark) is way down near the alternator attachment bolt. (see first picture) If you need me to I can send more photos, but I'm sort of lost. 1) Can't use the inner marks ( I don't know where they align to) 2) Can't use the outer mark ( as when I do align it up to the pointer, the flywheel is neither next to the ball or the OT, but seems to be somewhere in the middle. I I'm using inner as nearest to the engine and outer as nearest to the radiator. Please help, would like to figure this out to get this bad boy running. Larry F in Ca.

All, I have a 1975 bmw that is currently not running, I would like to first start by getting it rolling, and I mean rolling. It has 13 inch wheels, and I would first like to find any spare tire from any car, honda, toyota, you know the small temporary spare tires. I can purchase them relatively cheeply at my local Pick-a part. I just want to get the car so where I can actually move it in my driveway. I figure this would be much cheaper then purchasing new tires for the rims that the car currently has. Can anyone help me with the wheel dimensions. Thanks, Larry F.

All, I have a '75 2002 that I bought from a friend, years ago, I mean over 14 years ago. I have the pink slip, and I think that it doesn't need a smog here in California. I have one question, I want to get this car on the road, I'm planning on rebuilding the engine. What are the steps to getting this car legal here in California? I need some advice on what exactly I need to do. The car has never been "non-oped" here in California. So would I need to pay some outrageous amount to get this car registered? Do I get the car running, go to the DMV and get it going, or do I need to go to the Highway Patrol to get it checked? Let me know. larry_in_socal