[apaisncsu]

Originally Posted by The Spoon

Did you happen to leave the dummy tensioner installed?

Aside from that the only thing that comes to mind is that one or more rocker arms could've gotten knocked off and lodged somewhere during the installation process. It's fairly easy to verify all of them visually without taking anything apart.

Dummy tensioner was removed and OE tensioner was installed and torqued to spec. All rocker arms are in correct position on top of valve stems. Considering that I cannot rotate the engine in reverse, is it possible to disonnect timing gears, remove cams / bearing ledges, rotate engine around to TDC, then re-install everything? Any other thoughts?

[The Spoon]

Originally Posted by apaisncsu

Dummy tensioner was removed and OE tensioner was installed and torqued to spec. All rocker arms are in correct position on top of valve stems. Considering that I cannot rotate the engine in reverse, is it possible to disonnect timing gears, remove cams / bearing ledges, rotate engine around to TDC, then re-install everything? Any other thoughts?

This may be a stretch but are all washers that came with the timing tool accounted for? The last time I did one of these deep dives I dropped one of them while unbolting the tool. It ended up lodged in-between the crank sprocket and the timing chain. In hindsight, not having captive washers is kind of a dumpster fire waiting to happen.

While generally you don't want to rotate the engine in reverse (as in multiple full revolutions), some backwards travel shouldn't cause any harm. The Bentley manual even recommends rocking the crank back and forth to get the flywheel pin in.

It's also possible that whatever obstruction present might still prevent crank rotation in the normal direction even after removing the cams, so the goal of zero reverse crank movement might not be possible.