Klaus, Hope your trip to KC was enjoyable. I've got a second/orginal thread running on MVS about this as well. I'll drop some clarifications.

I initially set the timing, test-turn the engine a couple times and and started it. Sounds were a bit off, but I let it idle up to temperature. This is when the #5 cylinder started sounding like an exhaust leak and char/smoke was emanating from the exhaust manifold. I reset the timing, moving the exhaust cam back a couple notches. This moved the noise from #5 to #1 and the smoking stopped entirely.

I figure that the smoking was probably the copper gasket sealer burning off. That part has been fine since the first run... and since I replaced a missing copper crush ring on the water-pipe on the body of the turbo - zero fluid loss - finally!

I fiddled with the timing some more last night - making every possible effort to check and re-check the alignment of the three cam bolts. They checked out again and again with a metal straight edge along the top (1 and 2) and the bottom bolts (2 and 1). I loosened the exhaust cam bolts to allow the cam to move slightly to seat the teeth of the timing belt. Then, I torque it all down, check rotation.

And this changed nothing. Several folks at MVS have stated that what I did should have worked. A couple have suggested that the firing order could be off or that something else is off.

Considering the tear-down and rebuild I had to do, maybe something is not right. I'm planning to check my timing again and follow up with an investigation of the spark plugs, dizzy, and the cam position sensor.

The sensor is right back where it used to be, but I'll check it for trouble.