Line everything up as well as you can and then turn the cam in the direction of advancing the head timing until the teeth fall in place. Yes, I think, without thinking too hard, the top of the gear should go toward the intake side

By Bleedy (Bleedy) (24.68.6.16) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 01:59 am:

Okay... after a search of the site, came up with this:

i also found out anf not sure if its the same on american models, but here in NZ the two knicks on the cam pully dont line up with the head, so the guy from honda said it was a common problem and that the inlet side should be put down one tooth, and the exhaust should be parallel with the head. Wish he'd told me that years ago when i 1st got into hondas and discovered the timing issue

I'll have to check that tomorrow. I can't remember to which side we turned the camshaft pulley by one tooth. Must have been the wrong one if it's not running smoothly.

By Bleedy (Bleedy) (24.68.6.16) on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 11:59 pm:

Hello all,

We were doing the timing belt today. We just couldn't get the timing marks on the crankshaft pulley and the camshaft to both line up at the same time. The Haynes manual said to line up the TDC mark on the flywheel, which sounds a little strange since you'd have to disconnect the transmission, right?

We tried putting the timing belt on the crankshaft first, the on the camshaft, but we would always have to rotate the crankshaft to get the teeth to line up on the camshaft. We tried to compensate by turning the crankshaft a little, but it didn't work... just ended up still being off.

Anyway, we couldn't get them both to line up perfectly. It was like that when we took the timing belt off too. We put it all back together, and apparently it's making some slightly different noises now, though I wasn't around when they started it. We're kind of stuck here... any ideas on why it isn't lining up, or how to get it line up?