Cam belt missalignment symptoms

[steg1970]

What would be the symptoms of a cam belt being a tooth out?

I fitted a new one a month or two ago but only now is the car almost ready to go back on the road. The car had a vernier top pully so no timing mark but I marked it before changing the belt. The mark is a little out when the alternator pulley is set but not even half a tooth.

The struggles to turn over on the starter but does fire and runs. The plugs appear to be quite sooty and there is a real flatsspot/missfire at 4500rpm. This is with the car still on stands in the garage, it's not been on the raod yet.

If the belt was out i would have expected it to run worse.

How can I check the cam timing is right?

[burgo]

do you still have the original pulley?? if so you could take off your vernier and mark it in the correct place from he old one so then you can time it up properly

[steg1970]

No i don't have the original.

The reason I changed the belt was that the key aligning the bottom cam and alternator sprocket had worn allowing a small amount of movement. If I had set the alternator pulley a tiny bit out due to this key wear maybe I need to move the belt one tooth. Not keen on this as the cam is a 13RR from Peter maiden and I don't know the lift and duration. what is the chance of the pistons hitting valves if I move the belt one tooth?

Obviously no one can answer that last bit!

[Asa-James]

depends on the engine, most of the small block are non-interferance on standard cams (except one of the 1.2's) and i dont know how much room there is to play in there. best bet is put out a cry for help and see if anyone local to you has spare engine bits knocking around, and borrow to get it set up right

[Sloth]

you can measure the peak lift using a dial guage, this tells you when the cam is at tdc,(measure no 1 inlet) so hold it there. then set the bottom end to tdc. put ya belt on and tension it. done.

[steg1970]

Checked everything and it was what I thought, the cam was a tooth out. Luckily no damage done, except to my ego!!

Thanks for the reply's.

[novaguy08]

Never mind :D