I'm caught in an argument between two mechanic shops. The first one replaced my timing belt and retimed the engine, but the '95 3.5L Montero LS would only run on 4 cylinders. One of the coil packs kept blowing. They couldn't figure out what was causing that.

I had the vehicle towed to an auto electric specialty shop. They said that the engine timing was off 2-3 teeth on both cams. I had them retime the engine and now it runs like a top, no issues with the coil pack blowing.

When I told the first shop about the mistiming problem, they said there was no way their timing was off, because that engine wouldn't run at all if the timing was off 2-3 teeth. The first shop thinks the auto electric place is lying about the timing and ripped me off on the 5 hours they said it took to open the engine and adjust the timing.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of what happened as I'm getting different answers from the two shops. What's the TRUTH? Can a Montero engine run at all if it was 2-3 teeth out of time?

Don't have a definite answer for you, sorry. But it seems hard to see where an interference engine would run that far off. Did seem to run well, aside from being on four cylinders? Or was it just that it would start and not die out?