[Shotimes] timing belt replacement continues

[BJamesjr@aol.com]

If the gears lined up with their respective marks, and when the belt is on 
the lines on the belt lined up with the marks on the gears, then it is in 
time.  There are no other possibilities.  If you are confident in this then 
there may be some other problem with your car.

The rattling noise could be a problem with the tensioner so you might want to 
check it again.  Also a problem that some people have had is the timing gear 
on the crankshaft being loose and working back and forth so that it throws 
off the timing a little bit.  My car had a "click" from the front of the 
engine that I couldn't pinpoint.  When George reported a crank gear problem 
with his car I checked mine and found this problem with mine also.  What 
happens is that the crank gear is located by a Woodruff key in the 
crankshaft, and held in place by the harmonic balancer being tightened on 
very tight by its bolt.  If the bolt gets loose then the gear is free to 
vibrate back and forth against the key, gradually wearing the key and keyway 
until the gear can rotate back and forth up to about 20 degrees.  This will 
make the car run like crap.  I put a new gear and key in my car and it runs 
great.  You could have had this problem and not known about it, and when you 
put everything together your gear could now be located slightly retarded on 
the crank.  The way to test for this problem would be for the harmonic 
balancer to be loose enough that it isn't holding the crank gear in position, 
then rotate the crankshaft slightly each direction and watch to see that the 
cams move completely in sync with the crankshaft.  If there is any hesitation 
in the movement of the cams then there is a problem somewhere.

Apparently there are harmonic vibrations in the cam system so if there is 
slack in the system whether from the belt tensioner not being tight or the 
crank gear not being tight, the cams will rotate back and forth as the engine 
runs.  When the cams are out of time, the engine will run bad.  If the crank 
gear is off due to the keyway problem, this will throw off the ignition 
timing as well since the crank gear triggers the ignition through the CPS.

As far as finding TDC, you can do this by pulling the spark plug, then you 
have 2 options:  Put a hard stop into the spark plug hole, that will stop the 
piston maybe 1/3 of the way down.  You turn the engine one way until the 
piston gently contacts this stop and mark the position on the balancer, then 
rotate the engine the other way and mark the position where it stops.  TDC is 
halfway between these 2 marks.  The other way is to connect a dial indicator 
through the spark plug hole and watch it as you rotate the crank.  When the 
piston is at its max. point up, that is TDC.