'86 944 jumping time

[FordLover]

Hey ya'll. I've got a 1986 944 N/A that I'm bringing back to life. After a new every thing I finally got it to come alive. It jumps time after cranking over though and gets progressively worse. Could it be time for a new timing belt tensioner?

[89-944NA]

If it's jumping time, DON"T crank it anymore...unless you want piston to valve meltdown!!!!! At this point you only want to pull it through by hand, but STOP if you feel it bind up.

[FordLover]

Been there, done that haha. When I first put the motor in the car it was out of time and I had to replace 4 exhaust valves. Yeah I quit cranking on it when i noticed it out of time, but what could be causing it to do this?

[89-944NA]

Are you sure it's jumping time? Are you sure you had all the timing marks lined up? There are three of them, distributor and top and bottom of flywheel. If not, line up the distributor mark then pull the cam belt and crank the engine through by hand to align the two flywheel marks. Reinstall the belt, pull it through by hand at least two times and check the three marks again.

I guess the tensioner can go bad, but I have never seen it, and I have done a lot of timing belts (both mine and other people's)....average about 6-7 a year.

[FordLover]

I'm positive I had all the marks lined up. Learned that lesson the hard way. I've also turned it over many times by hand and even after catching it out of time the first time it wasn't hitting the valves so I think I got lucky. I still have good compression. I put it back in time this afternoon and turned it over 5 complete rounds by hand and it stayed in time. Put it all back together and cranked it. It ran for a few seconds and died. I cranked it again and it ran shorter and died. Once more and it just kinda hit and never really cranked so I checked the timing again and it was out of time. I called it a day at this point haha