back together but won't start :(

Got a new head gasket on (blown between #3 & #4) went to crank it with the gas pedal all the way to the floor and heard totally normal sounds (no clunk, clunk).

Next I put my foot on the brake, turned the key it turned over sounded like there was life in it then everything totally quit. The battery was completely dead, no bells, buzzers or lights.

I thought it might be the battery, so I got the battery out of my CR/V and the same thing happened.

I put the original battery back in and it was alive again and died when it tried to fire. I disconnected the battery terminals again, walked around for a few minutes, reconnected the battery and hit the ignition switch and the same thing happened.

Is there a circuit breaker in that system somewhere?


I haven't troubleshot this much yet, but if I had to point at something I'd point and say either there is a short in the distributor or my spark plug wires are not connected correctly.

All the timing stuff looks correct, but I wonder if I got the distributor back in correctly, the rotor is pointing at the bolt on the lower intake manifold.

The negative battery cable looks ratty, but I didn't see any bad insulation that looked lie it could ground something out.

No circuit breakers. Do a volt drop test on the battery cables and engine ground strap. Google "volt drop test" if you dont know how to do one.