FYI: What happens when your dizzy siezes up!
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Well, sometime around 3 months ago I would hear this random squeeking from my car. It would squeek for a couple seconds, then just dissapear. I had pluged a fitting in my thermostat, and thought it might be pressure or something from that. Not much more than a week later, I get a check engine light and find that my timing is off. No biggy, I set it and think nothing of the two events. About another week later, I notice my car starts "missing" under really heavy load. I figured it was the rotor in my dizzy, but kinda put it off for a little while.
NOW, fast forward to 10 days ago. I get home from about an hour long drive, and all of a sudden the sqeeking is LOUD and constant. I do some research, and find that my bearing is probably going out in the dizzy. OF COURSE...everything makes sense now. I order a new dizzy from distributorking.com (great prices BTW). Got it installed today (5 minute job). We go to set the timing, and cannot get the damn thing any closer than about 20 degrees off. However, the car is actually not running that bad. Hrrrmmm. I set the motor to TDC, pull of the valve cover, and find THIS:
Now, I've got a couple questions:
The car has been running quite rich for sometime now, do you think it's possible that this has been going on for quite a while???
I realize in order to get the cam timing set correct, the "UP" marks should obviously be facing UP. However, It's difficult to tell exactly what UP is. I looked for marks on the cam gears that would reference them to eachother, but couldn't find anyway. How do I make sure to get this right when I fix it????
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Hey Sean>
There should be two notches on each cam. One on the inside and one on the outside. The inside markings should line up cam to cam, and the outsides should line up with the flat part on the top of the head.
On this pic, the red circles the center notches, and the blue shows where the outer notch should line up with the head.
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Hey, great info Nick. I looked for a little bit for the marks, but couldn't see anything. Maybe know that I know the general vacinitiy I should be able to find 'em. Are they just little knicks, similiar to what is found on the crank pulley???
Also, what gets me is that fact that this can even happen! I mean, the timing belt is taut as hell, and there is shear pin built into the dizzy to prevent just this situation from happening. I'm just glad I didn't make some piston to valve contact.
Also, I am AMAZED at how well the car can still run when cam timing is off 20 degrees. I'm glad I checked it!
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Ths actual cam timing marks are lined up on the timing cover which it appears you dont have. What you need to do is line the cam gears up and get a straight edge, put it across the middle of both the cam gear bolts and both timing marks on the gear should be covered by the straight edge if everything is in line.
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Also if you rotate the cams so that the arrows point straight up, you should be able to use a couple small picks, or allen wrenches to hold them in position. There are small holes going downward through the plates that bolt down on top of the cam caps, and the cams have holes in them also, so that you can do this. I don't know if aftermarket cams have these holes in them, but stock cams should.
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