Intake Gasket went bad and car would not turn over due to hydro-lock after being parked all day. Car was not driven until low coolant light came on and temperature gage did not show that engine was overheating prior to hydro-lock. The car has 133k mi. and engine has not been run hard since car was new. I have replaced the plastic intake plenum and gasket after removing spark plugs and expelling liquid from cylinders. The engine had a couple of very slight back fires when I first tried to start it. Now it doesn?t sound like it is trying to fire period. I checked fuel pressure; it is at least 45 PSI with the key on and doesn?t bleed down after turning off the key. I also put a spark tester on a plug wire and it showed great spark. I put a noid light on an injector harness and it shows the injector pulsing is occurring. I removed oil fill tube and checked to see valves moving up and down while cranking the engine, they are ok. It appears that this is a timing issue. I hooked up a scan tool but no trouble codes appear. I removed cam sensor and checked to see that magnet was still on cam sprocket and it was ok. Has anyone else had this experience? Could trying to start the locked engine have jumped the timing or somehow damaged the crank or cam position sensors. I am also considering a theory that the balancer was possibly damaged from hydro-lock. Another possibility could be that I damaged the mass air flow sensor while cleaning out the crud from the throttle body. I was very careful and did not spray carburetor cleaner on the sensor, only on the engine side of the throttle plate. I used mass air flow sensor cleaner on the sensor itself. This engine always started and ran great up to the hydro-lock event. Fuel Pump, spark plugs, wires, fuel filter and air filter were all replaced in the past 10k miles. Any ideas before I take the balancer and timing cover off?
You should try a compression test next