Good J-body sites?

[Carlspike]

I signed up for v6z24.com, I'm still waiting for my account to be activated. Well, I timed the car correctly today and it's better but I still have a little bit of bad idle while it's warming up. I talked to the machinist that milled my head and he said it looked like it'd been milled once before too, and he said that might be my problem. He took 11 thousanths off of it and I don't know how much was taken off before, but does anybody know if that would be causing my problem or not? the only other thing I can think of is my coolant temperature sensor.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

yes on head shave. hondas have the same problem, same anything sohc or dohc. if the chain or belt were tensioned on both sides, it wouldnt be a problem, but that has its own problems, so i'll explain what is really happening.

when the head is shaved, there is a little slack that must be acounted for in the timing set. your cam to crank distance is shorter, and the tensioner will take up the slack as its designed to do. consequently, it pulls the cam off slightly in the direction of the tensioner.
the way around this a an adjustable cam gear. i dunno where you can find one for your car.

[Carlspike]

Thats what I was afraid of. The machinist said that I could get a shim for my head, but I'm not about to do a head gasket again in the snow. This is an 800 dollar car, I don't really want to spend any more money on it. Since my Cam is off a little bit towards the tensioner what if it moved it 1 tooth the other way, could that help? I've got my timing set by the book now and once I get the temp up to 170 then it idles fine, so it can't be that far off.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

if you turn it back it may help, but its only off maybe a few degrees, and turning a whole tooth is quite a few degrees. you probly best off not worrying about it. if you know how many teeth are on the gear, you can divide 360 by the number of teeth and see how many degrees each tooth is. maybe you can correct the problem this way, try it and if you dont like the results, put it back. but just do 1 tooth or you may mess something up.

[Carlspike]

I think I read that on my car a tooth is about 4 degrees, but I doubt theres 90 teeth on my gear so it's probably even more. If one tooth changes it that much I doubt I could get it right without an adjustable gear. I haven't had any luck fiding adjustable cam gears yet though. What about a chip to advance my timing at idle? I hooked up the scan tool and the spark advance is about 9 degrees at idle while it's warming up, and it doesn't idle well at that advance. When my car is warmed up and idleing find my spark advance is 15 degrees, maybe I could find a chip that would tell my computer to advance my timing?

[Doubt_Incarnate]

i know most cars timing retarded so it'll start. ithink its supoosed to stay retarded a little till it warms up then it goes to normal settings. if you advance the firing you may make it even rougher. i think your better of trying to retard it slightly.

[Carlspike]

I guess I'm pretty much screwed without an adjustable cam gear, I think I'll just drive the thing the way it is.