I ran into a similar problem when I did my timing. Mine turned out to be that I used the wrong timing chain set. People told me that it didn't matter but once i switched the chain and sprockets my XJ fired right up. The difference was the number of pins on the chain and the spacing between teeth on the gears. I put a 92 motor into my 94 and ordered my timing set for a 94. I had to go back and order a timing set for a 92 and bam. But also if the guy didn't line up the marks correctly when installing the timing set there may be a problem but if it was at a shop id hope that wouldn't be the case.

 

You'd hope so, but unfortunately you really never know. As the owner, we love our XJ's and take our time and want things to be correct, but to the guy at the shop, it's just another job.

I had a shop I once trusted, but several months ago I took my driveshaft in to have them do the u-joints (since I didn't want to deal with them), they handed me back the shaft. Immediately I noticed they'd boogered up the ends where the snap rings went into. That was infuriating since it was one of the reasons I was willing to have the shop do the job. I moved the joints and noticed that one of the joints was not rotating smoothly. I thought to myself - ok, they had trouble getting the old joints out but they wouldn't possibly hand me back the driveshaft with the u-joint installed incorrectly.

Wrong. I went against my gut and installed it and took the Jeep for a test drive. About 300 feet out of the driveway the Jeep is driving wonky and as I turn around to bring it home - BANG - the driveshaft sheared off the strap bolts and the whole shaft fell out. I grabbed the shaft and put it in 4wd to get it back into the driveway and ended up replacing the u-joints myself in the end anyway. So much for the "professional shop work" on that one.

I think they fired the guy shortly thereafter, but I now have doubt about that shop. I took the Jeep there for inspection last month, but if/when I need to have work done, I'm going somewhere else. Fortunately I discovered there's a 4wd specialty shop (aka a Jeep shop) about the same distance as my previously trusted shop. So hopefully between that shop, my trusted frame/welder and my trusted tire shop, I should be covered for anything that I can't or won't do myself.

 

 

 

 

It could be as simple as the wrong timing set, but since it "fit" he went ahead with it.

The only thing I'd say is that folks seem to have a hell of a time with getting the distributor indexed correctly. Apparently it's a tooth off the mark that the "spec" indicates. I've never dealt with this personally, but if I found myself in your position, I'd at a minimum be researching the hell out of that as a possibility before going to all the work of pulling the timing cover off. As I've never dealt with that sort of thing myself, I don't know if it's something that you can maybe "try and see" easily or not, but if so, it may be worth a try.

Perhaps you should get yourself a fifth of gin (or whatever your beverage of choice is) for when you finally get it fired up!

 

 

 

I would definitely be making angry phone calls with those compression readings on a freshly rebuilt engine.

One can hope it's just a misaligned timing chain, but even if so, if the comparably simple task of lining up dots on gears was screwed up, what other things were half-assed? I know very little about engine rebuilding, but it seems like there are a lot of precision measurements that have to be correct.

 

 

Plug wires are in the right order?