Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 1:21PM :
In Reply to: Guess posted by Gordon on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 11:35AM :
Yes, yours is the not-so-worst-case version. Should be a simple matter to pull the valve cover, line up the crank pulley at TDC with #1 valves closed and look at the marks on the camshaft pulley, which should be parallel to the top of the head at TDC. Sometimes there's multiple timing marks on cam or crank pulleys, sometimes a combination of paint marks and stamped marks, and sometimes the manual shows one kind of mark and the pulley is different. It's not always obvious on the japanese motors. If all else fails do whatever it takes to figure out #1 is up on the compression stroke -- try to look in the spark plug hole, look at the distributor rotor position, even pull the oil pan if need be. Then make sure the valves are closed. Turn the crank back 180 degrees from TDC and make sure they stayed closed. In other words make sure there really is a compression stroke (piston coming up with both valves closed the whole time) and then keep turning and make sure they stay closed till it gets to the bottom of the power stroke. There have been times when I couldn't find or trust the timing marks and had to revert to the basics like this.