Greetings, I adjusted my valves the other day and was a bit curious about how you know exactly where TDC is for 2, 3, and 4 cylinders. #1 was easy since I lined up the the fly wheel mark and made sure the cam pulley arrow was pointing up. Then I turned the cam pulley 90 degrees so the arrow faced the exh. valves and the notch was 90 degrees with the head. Are you just supposed to eyeball this since its hard to tell if the arrow is pointing exactly even with head and there is no fly wheel mark for this position like #1?

 

on our DIY section there is a write up on it

 

I read that DIY many times and from what I gather you just eye-ball the position of the cam wheel arrow & notches to get TDC...does this give you the exact position of TDC or is it ok to just get as close as possible?

 

I counted the teeth on the cam pulley betweem the two marks that line up with cylinder head.

I marked the tooth that pointed exactly up at TDC (halfway between the two notches). I also did this for the one that would point down at TDC.

With those marks you can line up the cam with the cylinder head to do the valve adjustment.

 

the other option is to take out the spark plugs and put a short wooden stick or plastic tube or something into the cylinder then rotate the engine just a little bit until it is all the way up and starts to go back down a little bit...

 

No no no...don't pull the plug and do the stick thing ....


CORRECTION TO THE ABOVE STATEMENT .... I had to read this over again ..with the UP mark on the camshaft pulley ,AND both mark on the inside cam pulley line up with the head,, that is # 1 ,,,
READ the lower reply that i posted for the correct way to line it up properly..

 

what desert you don't like the old screwdriver in the spark plug hole trick? *L* admitidly it's a fairly unsafe practice if done improperly but it does work.... However, as you've pointed out when the cam gears are exposed there is no need for it....

 

Well I lined up the cam gear marks against the head as best as I could tell so I suppose I did it correctly.

 

Continuation from the above post i made and corrected myself ..[]

Once you are done at # 1 , rotate the cranck counterclock, the up mark should face toward exh valves, 1 notch on the cam pullry should be 90 degree with the head , if so,, you are on cylinder # 3 ,, adjust it , just like you did # 1 ..once done,, again rotate crankshaft counterclock, till the up mark faces down and both notches on cam pulley are lined up with the head,,,if so you are at cylinder # 4 ,, adjust it, rotate same direction again till up mark faces rear of engine ( intake valves ) cam notch on pulley at 90 degree,, you are at # 2 cylinder,,

follow these directions ..

 

The reason I marked the pulley was to use the cylinder head to line up cylinder 3 and 2. Cylinders 1 and 4 are easy to line up, because of the notches.

I thought that it was hard to tell if the notch was at 90 degrees to the cylinder head when the "UP arrow" was pointing towards the front or back of the engine. Marking the pulleys exactly between the two notches ensured that the piston the top of the respective cylinder.