Truck has sat for 8 months. The oil pump went out and I put this on the back burner, finally put it all back together and no start. I replaced timing gears and chain, oil pump, ignition key barrel , and some other minor things like belt , plugs etc. On the first attempt at starting, the starter turned but very weakly and not all the way, then my battery had to be recharged. I did not keep up on regular good battery charging while it sat. I think I only charged it like 5 times or so. after having been on the charger for a few hours I tried again and the starter sounded weak like it was struggling and then all it would do is make a whining noise as if the starter was bogged down. No clicks like one normally hears with starter issues. I'm worried that the engine may be seized. I pulled the starter and bench tested it. It activates and sounds healthy out of truck so I know that does not rule out a bad starter necessarily and I also did a load test on the battery and that seems to check out but I plan on replacing both the starter and battery anyways. This is not the oem starter, I replaced it with a Bosch like 70 - 80,000 miles ago. Any advice before I pull the front cover off again to troubleshoot?

 

Get a 15/16 socket and a breaker bar and rotate the engine, it should rotate with some resistance of coarse due to compression. When you replaced the timing chain did you make sure to align the marks on the cam & crank?

 

Marks were lined up and throughout the whole process the engine could rotate. I'm going to replace the starter and battery on Friday but I have a feeling its going to just do the same thing...

 

Do as @Best4x4 suggested 1st make sure the engine can turn over. If that is fine start with the battery, if the battery is iffy cranking amps will be too low. A few hours is not enough on a dead battery overnight at the very least.

 

Is it normal when turning the engine over by hand to feel a lot more resistance at what I think is top dead center and just to verify but the timing chain is supposed to be tight on one side with a little bit of slack on the other side, right? How sensitive are these engines if say they were turned slightly counterclockwise, not that I did that but maybe it could have happened when i was lining up the marks....

 

If you believe timing set was aligned properly...and a fresh battery and starter doesn't do the trick...l'd re-check plug wires (correct order). Especially, before tearing the front cover off. Do the simple stuff first, don't dive back in until you rule out a few silly things that can happen.
EDIT....
Disregard...l thought you wrote it wouldn't start...now you say it won't turn over...big difference.

 

Im thinking I might have been turning the engine clockwise while looking at it from the front,arghhh. Im going to go take the belt off and the plugs out and see whats going on. Should the resistance or compression feel the same for an entire rotation of the engine?

 

You can turn the engine either way to be honest. With the plugs in you will move freely, then compression will build up and it will get hard. If you wanna see if it turns over freely remove the plugs.

 

yep, I cant turn it over with a breaker bar, belt off and plugs out... arghhh

 

Assume I did not line up the timing marks exactly, that would not seize an engine, right? so I'm still wondering wtf. When the oil pump went out on me I was at work when I started the truck up , oil pressure never built up, so I had it towed home. I knew the pump was going out as I already had a spare oil pump at the ready. I did drive it off the wrecker and up my driveway , like 50' and it was tapping a little from the driver side head. I pulled the valve covers and did a visual and half @ss checked valve lash but now I'm thinking something might have ate crap in the valve train. The engine turned over initially when I was replacing the oil pump but without another rover to compare I don't know if it was tighter than normal, the crankshaft would turn fine then get extremely hard to tun without plugs or belt( I assumed that was normal) Now im thinking I was hitting stuck open valves, maybe? arghh...where should I be looking for this gremlin?