timing marks

My golf ('93 sportline DX) has been juddering slightly under load at just under 3k rpm so I decided to give my dizzy a little turn to see if this helped. Loosened the nut on the dizzy clamp but I could not get the dizzy body to turn. I tried to turn it to the point of ripping the black female plug off the side (hall sender?) Thought "crap" and tried to start it obviously a no go so it sat on the drive over night. I got hold of an old dizzy - lined my flywheel up and made sure dizzy was pointing at 1 and whipped the dizzy out with the 'aid' of a hammer and chisel slapped the new/old dizzy in a she fired straight up. Ran her for the last week with the new dizzy with no problems. last weekend I got hold of a brand new dizzy so I thought I would use the new one and keep the old (known working) one as a backup. Thought I lined everything up as before and swapped the dizzies over so now I have my nice shiny new dizzy in place. Turned her over and nothing, she just cranked away but didnt fire up key went back to first position and I heard a VERY loud back fire (scared the crap outta some nearby playing kids) Looking back I didnt check the flywheel or any otehr marks - I only check the dizzy was pointing to 1 so i maybe put it in 180? Anyway - Maybe a duff dizzy I thought so I put the old one back in. Same thing happened but this time without the huge backfire. After messinga round checking the marks a few times I left it there.

All this week i have been trying each evening to get it going. talked to several people who have golfs and Im sure i have the engine at TDC. One very weird thing though - When I have cylinder 1 at TDC (looking in through spark plug hole and checking on the flywheel) my cam sprocket mark is pointing directly north!? i understand the mark should be aligned with the top of rocker cover? If I do put the cam to this point I can clearly see the piston is much further down on its stroke and I cannot see either the flywheel mark or the bottom pulley mark to bottom case arrow. The cam mark is also on the outside of the sprocket!? Something seems very odd. maybe the cam was changed and the sprocket put on 90 degrees out? Is that possible? Anyway i have tried to get it going with all marks at TDC but sprocket mark pointing north and I have also tried rotating 180 degrees and lining everything up but with cam sprocket pointing south - still nothing. I have check for spark at king lead and ht lead and there is definitely a good spark there. I have also had injector one out to check i have fuel coming through if i push the airflow plunger up which i do.

I read somewhere that the bottom crank turns 4 times to one turn of the cam? IF this was the was I should be able to get my cam mark to sit aligned with the rocker cover as Im currently 90 degrees off but I can only get it 180 so the crank must turn twice to one cam turn? That make any sense?

really lost now. this is the first every car I have carried diy maintenance on and everything has been pretty easy up to now. I consider myself pretty able where things like this are concerned but this has just baffled me. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Sorry for the extended version of the story but wanted to make sure i missed nothing out!

Thought i would add some pics:

These pics were taken last night when I double checked everything was lining up. They were taken straight after each other without the car being touched.

Flywheel timing mark:


Dizzy lined up:


Bottom pulley lined up to arrow on lower cam casing:


Now look at the cam mark crazyness!

basically :-

put something down hole 1 and get the piston to the top, TDC

check the fly wheel/crank pully mark is pointing upward.

line the cam up - locate the mark on the inside of the cam wheel and make sure that it lines up with the front face of the head.  the outside mark will do all sorts of things so dont worry about it.

turn the dizzy to position 1/tdc mark belt it up, re check all stays in time after turning it by hand a few times.

start it up.

Basically i would think that the cam would not be able to have the sprocket installed wrong as it is keyed to stop it rotating etc.

Thanks for the reply. What if no matter how hard you looked and how much WD40 you used you couldnt find any marks on the inside of the cam wheel  :roll:

try harder  

im sure there will be a mark, its a line infact.

I can look at an 8v for you tonight and get a rough placement of the outside mark but its not the one to use really.

Failing that you could whip the cam cover off and look for the position with the valves open on 1 for tdc (i think)

sciroccotune said

try harder  

im sure there will be a mark, its a line infact.

I can look at an 8v for you tonight and get a rough placement of the outside mark but its not the one to use really.

Failing that you could whip the cam cover off and look for the position with the valves open on 1 for tdc (i think)

That would be a brilliant help if you wouldn't mind doing that for me. Knowing where your outside mark sits in relation to the inside mark correctly will tell me where my inside mark SHOULD be and I will be able to determine for sure that my cam wheel has an inside mark or not.

When you say a line do you mean similar in appearance to the line found on the dizzy body? looks like a scored lined made by a knife? I was looking for a small center punched hole. Will have another look tonight with more WD40 and some light wire wool. Thanks for your help.

its more a pressed line than a score.

but are you sure that you have the dizzy in teh right way anyway>?

It shoudl strike plug one first on a clock wise rotation.

Ill try and get some pics for you later anyway.

yup dizzy definitely in the correct way.

Thanks for all your help.

checked the dizzy and it does seem in the right direction (not that i didnt believe ya )

also for your viewing pleasure…..





 8)

Its ALIVE!!!! Mate from work came round and after a few minutes he agreed that it appeared that everything was lined up correct. We then set out doing some guess work we lined up a mark on the flywheel that didnt seem to line up with anything else. Reset the dizzy and after a bit of a twist here and there she just about fired up. EVERY other timing mark was wrong. The cam wheel marks made no sense what so ever, the bottom crank fan belt pulley wasnt any where near the mark it should be. I have now used some bright red touch up paint and re-marked each wheel to where it should be. Taking her for a run though, she seems a little docile compared to how she used to run. I may point out at this point that during the car not firing up I (stupidly) started messing with the metering head mixture screw. I can only assume now that I have knackered the mixture right up. I have a had a play with the engine running but dosnt seems to be helping. She is also smoking quite alot on idle (blueish smoke) we did put a bit of oil down each cylinder to get a better seel so i am hoping its that being burnt off but I have probably done around 30 miles since and she is still smoking. Is there a base setting that I can get the mixture to so i know its not causing any internal damage? I will be booking it in for a rolling road session so I can get it tuned spot on but obviously I need top get it there. Just dont want to do it any damage.

ps thanks for all the help sciroccotune