95 Protege 1.5. Car would not start. Found timing belt had slipped. Replaced timing belt & now it starts but will not idle. As soon as you let go of the key it dies. If you hold down the accelerator it will run. Any ideas?

 

It sounds like you do not have the timing belt properly aligned, as in a tooth off. Another possibility is bent valves.

 

1 or 2 teeth can make that big of a difference? I will check it again. Thanks for the help.

 

yes it does. It has to be exact.

 

Well, I tried moving the timing 1 & 2 teeth either way & it did not make a difference. I dont believe it is a valve considering I have good & equal compression in all 4 cylinders. Do you think a tune up would do any good?

 

Was it running fine before it just quit? If so then is most probably due to something done during the timing belt replace. Are all of your sensors plugged in? Idle Air Control Valve especially. How does it run with the accelerator pressed down?
Diagrams below show the correct timing marks. Notch in the crank pulley should align with pointer on the oil pump. Cam pulley needs to have the "Z" staight up at 12:00 position. There are also some marks on the front edge of the pulley that will align with the valve cover surface. Other pic is of the spring that puts tension on the belt. Free length with it not installed should be 71mm. If it is stretched then no enough tension put on the belt. Spring needs to be removed from pin on block when rotating tensioner bearing as it will be overstretched otherwise. Why did the belt jump in the first place? Not a normal thing to happen unless something else is wrong.

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It was running fine before it quit. Thought it might be a spark issue. Out of curiosity, I checked the timing belt & it looked fine. No teeth were missing & seemed tight.It just turned over without firing at all. Found that the cam was about a 1/4 turn off when I had the crankshaft aligned. Bought new timing belt & kit. It will now start for a couple of seconds & shut off when the key is released. Tried moving a couple of notches each way & still no idle. If you hold the acclerator down it runs great at high rpm & misses a little at low idle. Got a fuel smell like fuel is not being burned properly. Check distributor, IAC, MAF,TPS. unplugged & plugged these sensors in & made no difference. Im a mechanic by trade, but these foreign cars are not my cup of tea! I cant believe it could run that good if it was 180 out? Belt too tight? Head issues? Something i did notice is that if you line the timing mark from the pulley to the mark on the plastic cover, the timing mark on the crankshaft gear does not line up with the mark on the oil pump housing! Wierd! Thanks alot for responding & any help would be appreciated.