What did I do wrong? I went about the removal of my 'M' cam and installation of 'K' cam in my non-turbo B23F by the book. I've rechecked everything that isn't inside the valve cover. The timing marks seem lined up. I even unplugged the battery for 15 seconds, then just to be safe, unplugged the ecu for 15 seconds.

Symptoms: Idle very unstable, shaky engine (mounts are good), revs rise and fall between a couple hundred rpm, vacuum guage vibrates heavily between 10-15 inches (formerly fairly stable at around 18" with 'M' cam). Also at 30mph in 4th gear (manual tranny) the car has noticeable driveline slop changes from one side to the other (like the kind experienced during acceleration or deceleration). This bothers the hell out of me so I now run in 3rd. Before, even when I drove at revs which were heavily lugging the engine at approx 25mph in 4th, it did not have this oscillating driveline slop. Finally, when I grounded the air control valve, the engine would run at extremely low revs, as close to dying as volvoly possible. Adjusting the idle did not change this at all.

The only things I could think of that would be causing this are either misaligned timing (how its misaligned I don't know), ignition timing is off somehow, or valve clearance is wrong. I checked valve clearance with a feeler guage and it seemed ok but I've never done this before so I could be wrong. Would valve clearance cause these symptoms? Would a cam gear which was one tooth off cause these problems?

I know that the 'K' cam is supposed to cause a slightly lumpier idle, but there's no WAY its supposed to be this bad!

The good news is, the car has a noticeably improved midrange, and the high rev power SEEMS to have improved though I may be suffering from placebo effect about the latter. The low rev power has declined as expected. The power curve does not appear to fall off nearly as quickly as the 'M' cam, but it doesn't SEEM to pull all the way through to the limiter like I would expect.

If anyone can tie all of this information together to give me a proper diagnosis, there's a candy bar of your choice in the mail. Thanks for the help.