Someone asked me for an opinion the other day and I didn't really know what to say since I've never heard of this happening before.

They did a cam/heads install (hotcam) and after the install, the motor is hard to crank and also it "kicks back". According to them, while cranking, the crank sometimes turns the other way, thus opposing and killing the starter. Pretty weird huh? That's exactly what he told me. He also said that the car is very unstable unless you rev it to like 3000 rpms.
I had something similar happen when the rockers were too tight, but they said they loosened up the rockers and it still does the same thing.
This guy is a mechanic and he thought the car possibly had too much timing, but this was on the stock tune, so that can't be it....

Any ideas?

 

How much timing advance do they have in it for "cranking"? Sounds like it needs a little less timing for starting, and below 3000rpm. Also, how big is the cam, and who did the programming?

 

Fred,
I did the tuning. It's a hotcam and I've done tons of them before. This car behaved the exact same way on the stock tune too, so it must be something else. Could they have possibly aligned the timing chain wrong?