95 Legacy Timing Belt Replacement

[Zookman]

Help! I have a 95 Brighton Wagon with a 5 speed and was planning to change the timing belt, as the car has about 97k on it. I used the Haynes manual as well as and article from "The End Wrench" as my reference to perform this repair. I will give a brief explanation of what I did and what is presently wrong.

First, I placed the engine at TDC and had the crankshaft pulley mark aligned at 0 degrees. I then removed all the associated fans, guards, crankshaft pulley, etc. so that I could get to the belt. The Haynes book tells you to turn the crankshaft and align the marks on the crankshaft and the left & right camshaft sprockets. I am assuming this needs to be done with the belt on. When I get the camshaft sprockets aligned, there are two teeth painted white on the crankshaft sprocket that roughly line up with the mark. My question is about the small triangle on the crankshaft sprocket. It seems like this is actually the arrow that should be lined up, not the two teeth with white paint on them. The triangle is either at 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock when the camshaft marks are lined up. I am hesitant to cut/remove the old belt until I know what I can actually move with the belt off. If the camshafts are lined up, can you damage the valves or screw up the timing by independently rotating the crankshaft?

Since I was unsure of how to proceed, I put everything back together last night, but I damaged the #2 plug wire when I was pulling the wires off to check the plugs. The metal insert that seats onto the top of the plug came out, so I pushed it in as best I could, but I don't think it was fully seated. When I start the car, it fires up fine, but stalls out about 10 or 15 seconds after it turns over. Would this be due to the plug wire or could I have possibly screwed up the timing on the car by manually turning the crankshaft. The car was running fine before I dove into it last night, so I am hoping this is a simple fix.

Anyone have any better instructions on the belt replacement (like maybe a factory manual) other than a Haynes? Hopefully I'll hear from someone soon. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[evolutionmovement]

Forget the white paint - for some reason there are double marks. There should be tick marks on the two cam pulleys and the crank that will line up with the notches at the same time. The engines are non-interference so there's no worry of valve damage. You don't actually have to TDC piston 1. If the marks all face up to their respective notches, that's all you need as piston 1 and 3 are 180 degrees apart. I think Haynes mentions it automatically as it would matter with most engines, just not this one. There should be 44 teeth on the belt to the left of the crank and 40.5 to the right.

The running issue is likely down to the wire. The only way to mess up the timing would be if it jumped a tooth or you put the belt back on wrong, but since you didn't take it off ... A bad cam or crank position sensor would definitely throw a code and either not start or possibly run fine without it.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Torque for the crank pulley needs to be at LEAST 100 ft/lbs., but I use 110. There is a large risk of the pulley coming off at the lesser torque quoted by Haynes. This has happened to many people with less than comedic results. Sometimes the crank cannot be salvaged.

Steve