Brian, don`t give up, It is good to see you posting. I appreciate all your info.

Charlie

And just to be totally clear on this. No. I did not know the rotating the cam shaft 90d would result in well, my result obviously or I would not have done it. As far as I could tell, the piston was already hitting the valve hense causing the loud knocking to begin with. I didn't know that my attempt at a correction would result in this damage... If I knew all this stuff I would not be asking questions here in the first place. The way I was reading your replys lead me to believe that the error in the engines current cam markings and the knocking where possibly related and therefore correctable.

I have that harbor freight gauge ordered so I have if for the next attempt. Might be a good thing to add a link to the tool in the sticky regarding the repair in the first place. Even a name of thie tool would be helpful.

I'm sure that there are more people out there that don't realize that you can do the type of damage I did by altering the cam rotation, so maybe a little tidbit in the sticky about that would be beneficial. Not everyone inherently knows this information.

So, maybe the good of this will be the chance someone else with a similar issue will get a heads up as to what not to do.

Have the car listed in the part section and locally to part it out.

not to bring up painful memories and all, but the reason i believe you're timing looked off be fore you changed timing was the piston was on its intake stroke and not the exhaust stroke. i could be totally off, but my timing marks only line up 1/2 the time. maybe its because the the top half of the motor moves half the speed the bottom end does. just guessing though and could be very wrong.