Engine misfires badly (please help)

[Peace_Power]

I recently bought an old 1986 E30 320i Coupe as a fun car to drive around. I've repaired a lot of stuff on it and recently decided to attempt to change the timing belt since there no record it's been done the last decade or so.

After I had changed the timing belt the car idled at a much lower RPM than usual. The car really struggled to get up to speed and it didn't seem to make it past 3500 rpms. - Something was very wrong!

It's just sounded worse and worse and it actually sounds like it might die on idle now.

I double checked the position of the timing belt more than once and it's on there as it should be.

I messed around with the harness from the distributor cap to the spark plugs as i thought I better get it out of the way when I first installed the new timing belt.

I tried removing the spark plug wires one by one to determine which cylinders are firing and not, and I believe 3-4 are running. =(

Help?

[Peace_Power]

Could it be an unsuccessful bleed of the coolant?

It can't be the O2 sensor since it's ignored when first started up.



I'm just a newbie but it seems like it's running very rich and not getting enough air. But I haven't messed with the AFM (air flow meter).

And also the fuel economy gauge climbs to the top and snaps back only to climb to the top again. Could that be related?

[Peace_Power]

It was probably the distributor that was out of position, took the TB off again and will align it again.

[Sea Aych]

did you mean to say 3-4 are NOT running? If you were running on only 2 cylinders i'm surprised the car even moved!

Check for spark at each plug, then report back!

[Peace_Power]

did you mean to say 3-4 are NOT running? If you were running on only 2 cylinders i'm surprised the car even moved!

Check for spark at each plug, then report back!

Sorry, I meant that it sounded like it was running on 3 or 4 cylinders. Most likely it was misfiring all over the place...

It was as simple as the stupid DIY I found made no mention of lining up the distributor pulley to the TB. It only mentioned the camshaft and crank... =(

I took the timing belt off and lined up the distributor and reassembled everything once more and it's working better than ever now. (=

Next time I attempt a TB i will mark the old one with a marker and the pulleys alike and then copy the marks over to the new belt and make sure everything lines up.