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Weird?

just make sure they give you the cam caps from that head and use those caps and you shouldnt have a problem unless its an issue with your cams
 
Yeah, I made it 100% clear that they better be sending the heads with the original cam caps or I'd be requesting for a full refund.
 
Update: New head ported, hopefully I'll never have to go through that again, and installed cams to insure they spun freely. Sure enough, everything is great. Time to put her all back together now and hopefully I'll have it on the road sometime tomorrow.
 
Big Jim, you are correct and this was clearly caused by installer error. Let this be a lesson learned for me and an example to everyone who does this, check all your bases and even the smallest details that are overlooked can result in disaster.
 
man this would have a been a perfect week to get our cars out. My SVT is probably out of service until I can pick up some tires...19's....very expensive. Hopefully within the next week or two
 
Oh trust me I know. I really wished I had the car done. The heads are on and everything is timed up I just have to put the rest of the garbage back on. I wished things could be going a little faster but two jobs and a girlfriend doesn't help. By the time you get your tires I should have the clutch broken in so we'll meet up for sure.
 
Yeah I know how you feel. With work and school and a live-in girlfriend when I finally do get time I dont want to do anything. Right now I'm driving my dropped cavalier because the SVT finally got a flat....uhh I hate my cavalier
 
Hey, it'd be fun until they found out. Anyway everything is assembled and I'm about 2 minutes from being able to start the car but I want to look it over again tomorrow with some fresh eyes so I don't overlook something stupid. I was hoping to get this up and running sooner but I've had some big projects at work that have been getting on my nerves and taking up too much of my already limited time. I won't sleep tomorrow until the car runs!
 
Well I got the engine up and running today and everything seemed good at first. Don't worry, just a minor problem, I hope...anyway after running for a few minutes and letting the temperature rise a little bit the car seems like it starts to surge. The RPMs don't go up and down but the engine sounds like it revs a little bit and then drops and it quickens the longer I let it go. I'm not going to start it back up until I find out what's going on. Anyone have any ideas?

I'm going to put this in Troubleshooting as well, don't mean to cross post but I'm more likely to get a quicker answer there.
 
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Well, here's the thing. The car runs perfectly fine on start up. It only starts to get like that when it warms up a little bit. I forgot to plug in the EGR at first and threw a CEL then plugged it back in and started it up. Again everything was fine until about a minute or two later it started again. I think if it was unmetered air it would be doing it all the time right? It takes a while for the engine to find idle, and it only seems to start when it comes closer to idle. I'm thinking that it may be the TPS, which is brand new, or the EGR. I just don't know exactly what I'm looking for in them.
 
There doesn't seem to be any vacuum leaks. I'll check my MAF today and check to see if it's dirty. Also could it be my plug wires? They are rather old but would it cause that at all RPM ranges instead of just near idle?
 
Yay, another problem. There is smoke coming from the rear header. At first the gasket did not seat on the valve cover and it spewed oil all over the header. I fixed the gasket and started it up again. Even after running for 30 minutes the smoke did go down, but doesn't seem to be going away. Should I pull the valve cover again and check the gasket even though I'm close to positive it is correct?
 
I was thinking about your problem (engine hard to turn over manually) the other night when building an engine for a customer. If you tighten down the cam cap bolts by hand and over tighten them slightly (easy to do as they are tq speced pretty low) the engine will be very hard to turn over. Make sure you follow all tq. specs when when building up any engine.
 
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