Originally Posted by swartlkk

You have to find the associated references on the balancer and the front of the engine. As the EDI Engine Timing thread states, the actual position when both sets of references are lined up is past TDC #1. That method for finding the compression stroke for #1 cylinder will work.

You turn the engine over by hand using the appropriately sized socket on harmonic balancer retaining bolt in the center of the crank on the front of the engine.

Originally Posted by ojosch

Well, I'm still not convinced that my harmonic balancer didn't shear the key, or that perhaps the new distributor gear I installed is indexed slightly different from the original (thus throwing off the distributor alignment). Or perhaps even that the machinist might have exchanged my crank without me knowing it, for a different one when I had mine in getting ground, and maybe had a different keyway position?

At any rate, what I wound up doing way back then was to ignore the marks on balancer, and I made a special bolt that would screw into the #1 spark plug (PLEASE DISABLE THE STARTER MOTOR BEFORE DOING THIS), and I manually with a wrench on the balancer, ran the piston up til it touched the bolt screwed into #1, then made mark on the balancer. Then you reverse, and turn the motor manually with a wrench backwards all the way around, until it again touches the bolt you have in #1 spark plug hole, and make another mark. Then make a 3rd mark exactly in between the other 2 marks, and that is calculated TDC. This spot should be fairly exact. Now, remove the bolt from #1 spark plug hole and put the spark plug back in.

Then line up the new TDC position you just calculated and then modify the distributor so it has more adjustment. I just drilled out the hole on the hold down bracket to a larger size and used a large flat-washer on the dist bolt so I could turn the distributor a bit. Then drop the distributor in and line up the arrows and lock down the bolt. If the distributor doesn't drop down all the way, it is because the oil pump drive shaft is not positioned in the correct spot to line up to the slotted fitting on the bottom of the distributor. You can either pull out the distributor and turn the oil pump shaft with a long flat-head screwdriver (trial and error, til it lines up and dist drops down), or you can bump the starter with a remote start switch until it drops in all the way, and then bump it back to TDC compression stroke and line the marks up again to verify that that your arrows indeed still line up in the distributor, and then lock it down.

It should start, run and be ok, but if it throws a code P1345 then simply adjust the distributor bits at a time, until it doesn't throw the code anymore and that should be within the tolerated spec. As far as I can tell, they designed it so that as long as it runs and does not throw the code 1345, then it is close enough for the computer to be able to adapt it in to run optimally.

I still never got around to manually checking the exact Cam Retard Offset spec, but since mine doesn't ever set the code 1345, and has adapted and seems to run fine, then I just kind of call it 'good' in my mind.

Edit: You probably don't even need to find TDC nearly this exact as I outlined above, as you could probably just have a friend poke the straw into the #1 spark plug hole and you can be underneath, turning the crank little bits, back and forth with a breaker bar on the crank nut until you find a rough TDC location (on compression stroke of course), and drop the dist in, enough to get it running, and then just adjust it so you don't get any codes.

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