Doing timing belt, water pump, and seals before I drop in my "new" engine. The exhaust side sprocket bolt came off pretty easily, but the intake side is really on there. I haven't been able to crack it yet with a crescent on the camshaft in the flat area.

Any other tricks to try? I don't want to damage anything and I assume an impact wrench is a no no here.

 

I ran into this on a core several months ago. Some ******** with a tube of Loctite Red and no common sense did the TB/WP on that particular motor, apparently. Removing the cam sprocket bolts involved a MAP torch and ~15 minutes of nail biting on each one. I usually just blow them off with an 18v impact, but it didn't even come close on these.

 

So, yeah, impact away. And hopefully have better luck than Andrew.

 

Just don't let whatever wrench you have on the camshaft to rest on the valve cover surface, you'll mare it up and have a leaky valve cover.

Put some pipes on both, have a friend hang off the pipe, it'll break free. HF aluminum jack handle works wonders for this.

 

Thanks guys. I ended up just impacting it... Didn't look/sound like it hurt anything, hopefully not. I guess I'll find out.

 

I have always used an impact. Some people don't like doing this because of the vibrations your cam shaft is subjected to.

 

Followup question if somebody could be so kind: in the midst of doing all that, my cam gears got misaligned. I have the fancy cam ninja FM tool, but I managed to bend it, so it isn't as handy as I thought.

Anyway, I read that there should be 17 teeth between the marks at the top of the cam gear with the crank sprocket marks lined up. That's set, so I'm good on that front.

I just realized something after turning the engine over by hand, though:
Start: crank mark lined up, 17 teeth
Rotation #1: crank not lined up, ??? teeth
Rotation #2: crank lined up, ??? teeth
Rotation #3: crank not lined up, ??? teeth
Rotation #4: crank lined up, 17 teeth again

My question is, could my crank be 180 out of phase? In other words, do I need to check that when I got 17 teeth lining the marks up, the crank wasn't exactly opposite of how it's supposed to be?

Sorry, I don't have the vocabulary to ask my question correctly (and if I did, I wouldn't have a question). But is it possible for crank to line up, 17 teeth between top marks on the cam gears, and my timing belt is set wrong?

Trying to figure it out in advance of putting it all back together, thanks!

 

And it's 19 teeth, not 17, so I have to adjust it anyway. If someone could clue me in with respect to the crank, I'd appreciate it. What I'm reading makes it look like tdc is tdc and I just need to fix my cam sprockets....?

 

can you see the timing mark on the crank sprocket? that would tell you if you are 180 degrees out or not.

 

Yeah, I got the timing marked lined up. Thanks, I think I'm just derping and overthinking it. Worst case, I'll pull it back out and fix it.

 

I overthink the first time I do everything too.

If you are worried about gross adjustments like 180 degrees, simple check:

Crank timing marks line up
intake cam lobes for #1 points to 9 o'clock
exhaust cam lobes for #1 points to 3 o'clock

you can still mess up your timing this way, but it would only be a couple of teeth, way less than the 180 degrees you are worried about.