On a cold start, you should smell slight gas smell at tailpipe from cold start enrichment. Strong gassy smell indicates cylinder misfire or leaking injector.
There is a slight smell of fuel at idle. It wasn't overpowering at all.
Just out of curiosity, did you time the motor atdc or btdc? And is the idle you achieve smooth, or does it misfire?
I am unsure what you mean here. This is my first engine rebuild and I'm still a novice to the terminology, so pardon my ignorance.
The way I timed the engine is with the valves all at rest. I brought #1 cylinder up to TDC to line the crank gear timing mark to the mark on the oil pump, then rotated back 2 teeth so the valves would clear when I lined up the cam gear marks to the valve cover marks. I locked the cams on the timing marks with 2 DOHC cam locking tools, and wrapped the belt over the cam gears and around the pulleys and crank gear. When setting the tension on the belt, it pulled the crank gear forward (clockwise) to line up with the mark on the oil pump. I rotated the engine twice to make sure the marks still lined up with #1 at TDC. Did I miss a step?
What you have sounds like a timing problem. I have goofed and set the timing at atdc instead of btdc, and it acted just as you describe. Timing will be very late in that case, with the spark real late, with the piston on the way down, and max cylinder pressure will occur long after the optimum crank angle. With a clockwise engine rotation, the crank mark will not be to the timing tag tdc mark by the timing degree amount. IOW, the crank tdc mark will be left of the tag tdc mark by what, 15 degrees?
Yeah, this is where my lack of experience comes into play. I'm completely lost.
My idle is smooth when in park or neutral, but when any load is put on the engine, it idles very low, almost wanting to stall. I will purchase a vacuum gauge and try what you have suggested and look for equal vacuum pulses from an intake port.
I'll start tearing into the front of the engine to check my timing again, since the suggestion has been brought up multiple times. Might as well put that 1% doubt to rest.
Thank you again for your assistance fasteddy, and everyone else as well.
EDIT: Is it possible I swapped the camshaft sprockets also? Looks like they are two different numbers in the ASA program. I wonder if they are clocked different where the pin from the camshaft locks in? How would I tell the difference?
