Retiming the head

[86espowa]

How do you retime and make sure the head is at the appropriate TDC mark, when you swap cams?
I dont think it would be smart to just put the new cam back in the same orientation the old cam was in, or is that how you do it?

i do have a bentley, but i havent looked in it for this, and i wanted to make sure i knew before i went and started to do it.

thanks.

[Boomerang]

You have to line up the line on the harmonic balancer with the mark that goes on the block, on the drivers side. Thats when the no.1 cylinder is at TDC.
Then once the head is off, you line up the mark on the cam sprocket and point it towards the line, indicating TDC, just look at the orientation, so say that the number one cylinder is at the top and look at which valve is open so you can put it back to where it was.
You honestly cant screw this up on an M20, the engine is like a bunch of lego's and idiot proof, for god sake look at the simple design of the head and valve train lol Just make sure the no.1 cylinder is at TDC, you can still rotate the crank or cam as you please when its all apart, then just rotate it back to those lines and you are fine. When i use the adjustable cam gear, i make a little notch in it since it doesnt have any line to correspond to the timing mark. Just remember the cam only spins twice as less as the crankshaft so you will be dead on or 180 degrees off, which wouldnt allow you to even put the head on :)

[86espowa]

yeah, i have timed two m20's with success, i just wanted to make sure that when i reinstall the cam, it will be at the right position to have it be at the true TDC for cylinder one.

thanks for you help, i understand now.