I'm working on my friend's '91 SE 5spd. I'm pulling my heads to replace the head gasket, but as as was removing the timing belt, i noticed that the marks on the belt don't match with the marks on the camshaft sprockets, and only the right side (front) camshaft tic marks aligns with the marks on the rear timing belt cover. The crank timing pulley doesn't match with the mark on the oil pan either. i can tell some had been in here before. The car ran fine before, and I know that I didn't rotate anything independently. What should I do??

 

did you pull the belt off and then line it back up to make sure they were in line? also, you have piston number 1 at top dead center correct?

the notches on the cam sprockets won't quite line up with the bumps on the back timing cover. those are just general points that the cam should be close to. the best way is to make sure you have piston 1 at tdc and then line up the cams and crank to the timing belt. with piston 1 at tdc you shouldn't have to move the crank at all but the cams you might have to move just a tiny bit to line the marks up with the belt. sometimes the belt will stretch and allow the cams to get a little bit out of spec. hopefully this helps.

 

I know that they won't be perfect, but the front cam sporcket looks good, but the crank sprocket is 3 teeth off and the rear cam sprocket is off 6 teeth. That seems like way too much.

 

hmmm... very interesting. maybe the belt is on backwards...

look to see if there are any arrows or just look at the words of the belt and make sure you can read them when looking towards the cams. another thing you can do is count the teeth between the two marks on the belt to double check it is correct. if i remember correctly there should be 43 or 44 teeth between the two cam marks on the belt.

that is very weird. let me know if any of this helps or you're still stuck.

 

The belt was on right, and whats disturbing is that the lines on the belt match perfectly with the marks on the cover and the oil pan. I'm pretty certain that #1 is at tdc, the valves are closed and the dist. rotor is pointing at the #1 plug wire lead, and the crank pully was lined up the the mark.

 

That's very weird. Well... I'd just move the cam back into the correct position. On my VG-T the rear cam was about 2 teeth off so I moved it back to the correct position and it is working fine. The original belt must have stretched quite a bit or something.

Just be careful when spinning those things because those suckers will spin very quickly if the valve springs push it.