Wondering if I am going to be bringing my machine shop a blank check and a chewed-up head next week.

Here's the situation. Just did the 90K timing belt job on the GSR, its first. Car's been great until now. While I was in there, I decided to do everything in sight: belt, tensioner, water pump, main seal, cam seals.

I took the cam sprockets off to get the old cam seals out and the new ones in. Then put the sprockets back on, then took them off *again* after I realized that the inner timing belt cover has to go on before the sprockets. D'oh! I also had the cam holders off, plus the right-side cam bearing caps, to let me get at the seals.

Everything new went on and I very carefully torqued to Haynes-book spec with a torque wrench. I walked around the TDC loop in the order 1-3-4-2, checking crank alignment, cam alignment, and valve clearance for all cylinders.

I adjusted three or four valves that were just slightly wide of spec. Used a .203mm on the exhaust side and a .178mm on the intake.

Changed filter, added oil, turned it over with starter only a few times to move the fluids. Put on the spark leads and started for real. Immediate clatter. Shut down. Go look for loose mech bits. Find a few, fix them, try again. Immediate clatter. Shut down. Check oil. A bit low. Top it up. Start again. Immediate clatter. Careful listening says that it's from under the valve cover.

Grrrrrrrr. Taking that thing off is a huge annoyance, all eight primary bolts of it plus the various attachments. But OK, I'll do it, there must be a valve madly loose to make that sound.

Ran the engine through the complete TDC cycle again. All marks line up. All clearances are OK. Cover back on. Start up. Chatter.

Damn, what could be wrong? Racking my brain, here are two possible areas where I might have blown it:

(a) I instinctively use threadlocker-blue on major bolts, not so much to keep them from vibrating free, but to keep them from fusing permanently in place once they're torqued in. I put some TL on the cam holder bolts the first time the cam holders were up. Then when I popped off the cam holders again, and pulled those bolts the second time, I found the threads filled with a mixture of uncured threadlocker, and oil. The bolts seem to go through a wet section. Great. So I cleaned them and chased the threads and retorqued. Possible trouble: bits of cured threadlocker in key oil passages?

(b) I had the belt off by the time the cam sprockets had to be removed, so they were free to spin. In order to lock them in place to pull the sprocket bolt, I used a big 19mm wrench with the open end under one of the sprocket arms, and the closed end wedged down in the motor mount space. Similar procedure when I put the bolts back in. And remember, this cycle got done twice, because of my having forgotten the inner TB cover on the first reassembly. Possible trouble: distortion of cam(s) by the force applied on one end?

If anyone has any bright ideas, I'd be grateful. Thanks!

Chris