I didn't think this was remotely possible either, but I guess it is. Two days ago while attempting to properly time my car after the most recent of many cylinder head swaps, I noticed something strange: The closer I got the marks lined up correctly on the cam, ignition, and crank pulleys, the worse the car ran. For example: It all started out with the car running 2000rpm idle and not letting me rev past 4,500 revs. Then I moved the cam 1 tooth forward. Now it runs 1800 rpm idle and won't exceed 5,000 revs. Then I moved the cam 2 teeth back and it won't exceed 3,000 but the idle was much better. Then I lined everything up exactly on the notches and the car idles at 800 and won't clear 3,200rpm.

Strange eh? So at the advice of Lennart, I took a look at the crank pulley. I removed it from the car, and wouldn't you freaking know it, the last guy to touch the thing had badly messed things up for me. Turns out the crank pulley (3 in 1) had been disassembled, reassembled with the timing mark 80 degrees off of where it is on the crankshaft itself, and then put on the car. So basically when the mark on the pulley showed dead center, it was really 80 degrees retarded! The car still ran! I even drove it 10 miles like this and the only strange thing was it wouldn't rev past 5,000!

So I reassembled everything, started it up, and it ran fantastic! 30 minutes later of course something horrible happened which was entirely unrelated to timing. Read about that in the RWD forum about 30 messages down.

Point is, if your car displays these bizarre symptoms, maybe somebody just improperly assembled the crank pulley system when they worked on it last.

"Bunch of savages in this town"
--
Isaac Babcock - '83 245DL and '83 244ti, 'Sounds to me like I am right..' -JakeJ