ckabee1

Helped a friend check the TB tension on his '85 5sd. Set crank at TDC, but the gear marks sat at about the 10 oclock position, nowhere near aligning.

Rotated a few more times and put the crank at diff positions, still no alignment.

Before I pull out the 32 v'r, I want to confirm:

1) marks should line up at TDC?
2) How can the car run that far out of alignment?
3) Is this a job for the 32v'r or something more serious?

We did not check the driver side. The car seems to run fine, other than a puff of black smoke on heavy excelleration.

Thank you in advance.

Cosmo Kramer

Turn the engine another complete revolution and see where they are. The cams only make one revolution to every two revolutions of the crank.

mark kibort

they can only be a couple of teeth off 15 degrees or so, or that would be 7.5 crank degrees . anyway, as suggested, rotate the engine one more revolution, and then see . are you using the correct marks to see alignment of the cams? if you are at TDC, the cam pulley marks will be near straight down or aligned. YOU could have your harmonic balancer reversed. are the numbers facing you when you read them on the harmonic balancer? (i.e. 0, 10, 20, 45, etc)
The porken tool is for fine tuning of the cam settings, or alignment if you had to replace a pulley, so you wouldnt have to get in there and adjust the cams by pulling the cam covers to do much more difficult timing measurements.

mk

ckabee1

we rotated through 1 more revolution and the marks were still at about 10 oclock. We also looked at the 45 degree mark.

I can't remember if the numbers were facing me or not. I can have him take a look.

Landseer

Snap some good pictures and post them please. There are enough marks involved in this to warrant folks taking a hard look to support you better.

mark kibort

unless you have oil pump pullies on your Cams, it will take 2 revolutions to get the marks to appear at the same spot.

if the marks are showing up around 10oclock,then you have your harmonic balancer on backward, and who ever timed it out before, found another way to find TDC.

If this is a 2 valve car, then the marks are at about 10oclock, but there is a pointer to show that alignment.

a 4 valve car has the marks straight up and thats why you can just peak through the belt cover vent hole to see the alignment.

the good news is that it is running, and you cant run with more than 7.5 degrees very well. (ive run on 3 teeth off which is 22.5 degrees or near 11 degrees crank, and it runs real bad, just barely running, when I skipped some teeth at a race)

mk

PorKen

'86-up.

Early '85 don't have the cam gears with the visible notch on the front, or covers with the reference nub in the breather.

Late '85 have the updated gears, but only the 5-8 side cover is the updated type (can be removed w/o unbolting PS/alt assembly).

Late '85 engine. Note offset of 1-4 cover breather vs updated 5-8.

ckabee1

Just got off the phone with the owner - turns out the harmonic balancer is on backwards.

Nice call, Mark.

He's going to take it to the shop Monday and have them fix it.

Thanks to all.

Bill Ball

I never quite understood how this happens so often. It's hard to imagine how you can do the timing belt with the balancer backwards. So, I'm guessing the belt was done with the balancer on correctly, then the balancer was removed and reinstalled backwards. However, I don't know why the balancer would be removed except to do the timing belt or the crank seal and oil pump seals (which require a timing belt job anyway). I guess I do not have enough imagination.

ckabee1

seems the tb/wp was replaced some years ago. The owner and I decided to check the tension since that had not been done after the belt was replaced. Evidently, the shop put it back together backwards.