Hi. I am having difficulties putting this motor I bought from RGW LLC back together. It is from the black 2002 IS300 with 35k miles, bought the long block. The motor arrived with only the exhaust camshaft pulley on. I have all pulleys for the timing belt on and the camshaft pulleys line up 180* off of the crankshaft timing belt pulley. I believe this is normal since for every 2 rotations of the crank there's one rotation of the cam. I go to turn the crank with the pulley bolt and the timing belt on and something hits before TDC and right after TDC. (~15* - 20* each way).

My first instinct is to take off the head or either take off the camshafts and set it to TDC. If I just take the camshafts out and set it to TDC then I won't know if the valves are bent.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am ready to get this car running .

 

Update: I removed the cams and performed a cylinder leakage test. According to the gauge this is the low leakage percentage ends at 40%. Also, the test takes 12PSI of air to set the gauge. Link to tester. I will be running 6-8 PSI of boost, so I want it to be safe, reliable. A shop will rebuilt the head for $175. This includes cleaning, dis-assembly, and cut the valve seats. How does this sound?

New valve seats at Sewell Parts are $374 shipped. I have not performed a compression test but it sounds like there's normal leakage of the cylinder, not the head though.

Results:

1. 15%
2. 28%
3. 23%
4. 20%
5. 38%
6. 38%