Charley B

Can someone remind me the proper direction to rotate the engine by hand and the size of the crank bolt. I'm thinking it's clockwiase as looking from the front, but I don't dare just guess.

I don't know what dives me more crazy, looking for things with search, or trying to find what i need in the CD manual.

heinrich

clockwise as you stand in front of the engine. bolt IIRC is 32mm

heinrich

Deep impactr sockets from HF work great.

jon928se

27mm

When you are underneath pull the wrench (handle down) from drivers side to pass side. (LHD)

Charley B

Thanks guys.

Mrmerlin

if you want to you could also make an arrow to point in the correct direction on the crank damper.
A sharpie works well for this.

GlenL

Yeah, the engine turn clock-wise when viewed from the front.

I was thinking about this yesterday. I was turning an engine by hand and it'd snap back sometimes if the turn ended on a strong compression cycle. Ya know, every engine does that when you turn it off. It spins until a compression stroke stops it and then it snaps back. Makes me think that the edict to "never turn it backwards" is overstated.

Vlocity

You can always verify on an unknown engine by looking at the timing marks on the harmonic balancer BTDC and TDC make it simple to understand.

Ken

WallyP

Another way to remember is to always turn it in the tighten direction.

According to Porsche, the problem with turning it backwards is that the Belleville washers in the tensioner might be damaged.

Vilhuer

Belt tensioner is always after crank to keep load which affects it as small as possible.

GlenL

It's on the "out" side of the crank because that's where the belt will be slack.

Everytime you shut down the engine it'll shake back and forth. That's gotta be harder on the washers than turning it by hand. I'll still be going around that 1.9 extra times when I overshoot TDC.

PorKen

There is also a warning in the WSM that an undertensioned belt may jump time if the engine is rotated CCW.