Timing Belt help:
 

Back when I did the belt on my car we got it first try 100%. The last five miatas I've done have been a total pain in my ass, and the very last one took us six times to get the belt right (well... we thought the belt was off because the car was supercharged and didn't have any power.. come to find out the supercharger belt was slipping almost full time...)

The damned motor is on a stand and I'm still having a hard time getting it set correctly.

I've read the stupid book like eight times and its not helping. Read the howto on miata.net seven or eight times.. Still no help.

Basically can someone give me a few pointers? Should the indexing marks on the cam cogs be at dead 12 o-clock along with the crankshaft indexing mark?? I know those stupid "I" and "E" marks on the wheels that align with the backing plate aren't supposed to be lined up dead even..

Also.. can someone give me an accurate count of the number of teeth which are supposed to be between the 12 o'clock index markings on the cams? One guy has told me 19, another 21...

Those marks that allign on the backplate are the ones that matter. Get those correct. When their correct the other marks will point generally up, but not perfect. If it helps, put a cressent wrentch on each cam and clamp the two wrenches together with a c-clamp. Then the cam timming will stay correct while you get the belt on and check everything.

Okay, so line the E and I marks with the backplate perfectly, them clamp them? Thats correct?

100% Correct. That's the easy way. Note, Once you get it right, if you ever had to pull the belt again, you can clamp the cams and they won't move, making it easier to reinstall the belt.

I never thought of clamping two wrenches together holding the cams in place before.. saw that on miata.net, gonna use that for sure!!

Thanks. Hopefully we can get this right. Once I get the motor in the car it'll be HELL trying to adjust the bolt on the tensioner for the belt... Had to do something I really didn't want to. :(

Come to find out theres a difference between the FWD and RWD *BLOCK* nobody has mentioned yet that I've found online.. On FWD application they used a different alternator mount than the RWD. RWD has an ear on the water pump that FWD does not have. Also on the water pump FWD timing tensioner bolts to the pump, on the RWD the tensioner bolts to the block. So, using a RWD pump on FWD block. . . Yeah. So I stuck a nut behind the water pump to fix the problem. Once I get timing set its not going to be a problem. This motor is only a long term temp anyway.

I think you will find that the water pump "Ear" is 1.6 vs. 1.8

I've mentioned that a number of times... I dealt with it on my escort engine install.

19 teeth between the marks.

clamping the cams never works for me. put the Exhaust cam into postion, the valve will kump into place right where it needs to go. turn the intake side to where it needs to go, it will pop into place about 2-4 teeth clockwise past the spot.

get the crank to tdc and proceede to wrap the timing belt onto the exhaust side first.

get the passenger off the tensior so the teeth will rest on the outside edge of it.

get a 14mm wrench and turn the intake pulley back counter-clockwise and finsih putting the belt over. verify the cam marks are still correct.

pull the belt back over the tensioner into the correct position. loosen the 14mm bolt to add a bit of tension on the belt. turn the crank untill the cams go back to the marks and make sure they still line up. if they do you're golden.

there will always be 19 teeth between the two vertical marks when the cams are lined up.

I just looked, and made sure everything was tdc. I don't understand what's so difficult. Maybe I've just been lucky.

Well if thats the case someone put the wrong water pump on the escort engine to begin with..

http://jugrnot.com/waterpump.jpg

Attached to the engine in that photo is the miata pump I pulled off my blown up engine, foreground is the escort pump that was attached to the 1.8 when I removed it from the junk yard. :confused: