Wont Start

Make sure the battery has a full charge and battery connections all good, at both ends, not just at the battery. Does the starter motor crank the engine or not? By reading your post, I'm not sure? If it cranks good but won't start, have a helper crank it while you check for spark at the plugs. Also, use a gage and check proper fuel pressure and fuel injector pulse. If you have serpentine belt, it's still there? Not carb belt. If you have distributor does the rotor turn when you crank it? I enjoyed the last paragraph in your post. lol

So far Battery was charged, but might have a bad cell so I am going to replace anyways. All wires seemed to have had a good connection. All you can hear is the starter try to turn but it is not cranking the engine. Serpentine belt intact. When I placed in Neutral I spun the crankshaft to check if engine seized and so far it turns I dont hear any knocking or odd sounds. Fuel pressure checks ok in the proper ranges I saw online.

BUt over all the started is not engaging the flywheel but never had a problem or struggle starting

It appears you have coil on plug or near plug ignition, so no distributor. You may need to check cylinder compression and timing chain?

yeah Im hoping its something simple. Im going to try to pull the started and have them bench test it to see if solenoid is bad. but it doesnt sound sluggish or anything

yes I have a coil on the top of the valve cover with a boot to coil on the spark plug

If you think starter motor problem, sometimes, you can take starter motor off, lay it on the ground, hook up jumper cables properly from charged battery to starter motor. It should kick out the drive gear and spin. You can check the teeth on flywheel and starter motor drive gear?

will do, Ill let yall know when I find out

UPDATE: So recharged the battery, turned ignitiion, starter engaged and spun the flywheel & crankshaft. Pumped the gas pedal. nothing. as engine is turning I do not hear anything slapping like a timing chain or something. So now checking to see if I get spark or fuel

checked the pressure at the fuel rail on the top of the block. getting fuel. so perhaps no spark. im taking the battery right now to get it bench tested, although 12v is reading maybe a cell is bad not giving it enough cranking amps

UPDATE, so I ordered the Harmonic Balancer puller and removed. Opened up the timing chain cover and OOPS found the problem. The plastic guide for the tensioner and a few teeth on the upper sprocket (cam shaft sprocket) broke off. Now I am having the following problems and perhaps you know a technique since I have tried viewing YouTube videos, but people skip this step or they just talk too much about something other than the issue the video is on. So the oil pump on the crankshaft sprocket, is connected to the oil tube to the bottom of pan. Is there a way to remove the oil pump without removing the entire oil pan? Also from looking at the specs and such, I have used a wrench and turned the top sprocket over and over and over again and the position tabs (the dots) on the cam sprocket and crank sprocket never align, which leads me to believe that the chain has jumped the sprocket (although still attached) so of course once I replace the sprockets, chain, guides and all I would assume I have to manually align the sprockets to function properly, or is there another step Im missing?

Yes the chain has jumped over the sprocket ( that’s why teeth are broke off ) . Need to replace everything and yes the dots on sprockets have to match up if your not sure about the dots have someone who is look at it before you put the cover back on and you can line them up , then put everything else back and fire that mother up.