Cylinder Head rebuild, what could go wrong?

The logical suspect would be the camshaft timing is off by one tooth. Any mechanic, inexperienced or previously inexperienced, should be given the chance to recheck his work. The guy who did the work could become one of the best mechanics around if people give him the opportunity to sharpen his skills. We all started out with no experience.

I'm in the U.S. And mechanics here have an undeserved bad reputation because of a small percentage that are dishonest, just like any other profession, but all the good shops warranty their work. The trouble is you often don't know for sure if a new problem is caused by the recent repair or if it's just coincidence. No one likes to be blamed, and when it's not something the mechanic caused, it can be hard to convince owners of that.

It sounds like you could build a thriving business if you gave customers good service and warrantied your work. The strongest businesses here are those that put the needs and best interest of their customers first. The profits come shortly after that from happy repeat customers who spread word-of-mouth advertising.

Some people seem to think it's a character flaw to admit you did something wrong, especially when it affects something as expensive as a car, but in reality it takes a strong and confident person to own up to their mistakes and correct them. Those are the people I respect. Consider going into that line of work.

The best I can suggest is to get a copy of the manufacturer's service manual. There will be diagrams showing the timing marks and instructions on how to take apart what is necessary to set that timing. You can also buy a subscription to online service manuals but I don't like them as much as paper books. Mitchell is one. We have links to them on this web site. All Data is another one that is real popular. You might even ask your mechanic if he subscribes to one of them and will print the relevant pages for you. Here we spend over a thousand dollars a year for access to the information. For individuals like you they offer access to one car for a year for around $30.00. You might try bribing your mechanic with a box of cookies. (Chocolate chip)!

My community college also had subscriptions to both services for five computers. One of them was in the library to make it available to the general public. That was because those schools are funded in large part by the tax payers and that was one way to give back to them. We have to pay for the printouts but that is real cheap.