Oops, timing belt came off before I marked it

So I'm changing the belt on my 2.5i. Everything was going very smoothly. The crank bolt came off with the car in 5th gear, and the crank pulley even came off by hand!

 

Then poop, the timing belt came off while I was turning the engine by the cam. I've always done that on other cars I've worked on once I get the crank pulley off. However, I wasn't able to line up the cam/crank and mark it with white-out before the belt jumped.

 

I know the cam marks pointing up will always be correct, but the crank has to turn twice for each cam rotation. I will be taking out plug #1 to check when I'm at TDC. My only fear is that since this is an interference engine, will I be damaging valves while turning the crank to get to TDC?

I'm using a Gates timing kit BTW, and all the idlers are the exact same brand/part number as OEM. It's quite nice.

Well after more reading, it seems like the crankshaft mark is not even TDC on the EJ? In this case, I should be ok just lining up all the marks pointing up against their markers? And since the pistons are halfway in their stroke with the crank lined up, I don't have to worry about banging the valves against the pistons then?

Well this isn't going well. Was putting the water pump back on and it didn't feel right. Took it all off and saw one bolt had taken all threads out of the block. F@#$%*&@(#$*&%*@#$&%. I didn't use that much force to put it in there in the first place.

 

I need to figure out what thread that bolt is, and maybe try to tap the block with a bigger pitch, or helicoil. Damn it.

Well after more reading, it seems like the crankshaft mark is not even TDC on the EJ? In this case, I should be ok just lining up all the marks pointing up against their markers? And since the pistons are halfway in their stroke with the crank lined up, I don't have to worry about banging the valves against the pistons then?

 

Just line up both cams to TDC and line up the marks on the Gates belt, I believe if you do that the mark on the crank should line up and you're good to go. That's all I did and my engine hasn't shredded itself yet

Finished the job a little while, just getting around to posting now. Ordered a helicoil kit on Amazon and shipped it same day local delivery. Got it by 6 pm, and everything was in and going by 8. Not bad I suppose.

 

I did make a big oops and starting drilling with a 3/8" when a 1/4" was required. My power drill and battery drill were too big to fit. I then figured I'd put the drill bit in my tap set handle, but picked up the 3/8" in my haste. Luckily I was drilling slowly by hand so I didn't take off much material, but man is aluminum stupid soft if you can drill by hand.

 

Helicoil kit went in nicely, everything else went in nicely. The marked lines on the belt don't exactly match up to the notches on the cam pulleys, but I counted the teeth and they were correct, and after several turns on the crank by hand, the notches were timed correctly.

 

Engine has good (same as before) power, and no funky noises, although my throwout bearing is just getting louder and louder. What a relief. Now to see if I have any coolant puddles on the ground tomorrow morning.