To begin I pulled out all of the bolts on the timing side of the engine and put them back in all torqued to spec and using blue loctite. The only bolts that didn't get blue loctite were bolts that got red loctite, like the crank bolt and the oil sprocket nut.



I was told a new ARP crankshaft bolt was on its way, but the vendor kind of dropped off the side of the earth, issued no tracking number, and I couldn't keep waiting around all month for it to magically show up. I used the original ARP crank bolt I had, cutting the bolt threads til the point I could get the bolt threaded in the crank. It was still very snug, but could now thread in and out of the crankshaft, and the stock bolt still threaded in just as easily as before.



The crank key was tricky to get into its groove. I spent a good 10-15 mins trying to figure out how to fit the sucker in there, but eventually it slipped in. I got the BS sprocket removed and replaced with a spacer, than the trigger plate, and than the crank sprocket. Got that bad boy tightened down using the shop rag between the crank and block trick.













I lubed up the head real good, and recoated the camshafts with some assembly lube. I put the cam gear seals with the flat side facing out. Everywhere I could read, forms, haynes, FSM, no where could I find how the seal was supposed to go in, they all just say, it goes in. Hopefully I am right thought; flat side facing away from the engine. I made sure the engine had Piston 1 at TDC, and than with dowel pins on camshafts facing 12:00, I tightened the camshafts down, again with all blue locktite.











Now onto my first timing belt job. And boy was I in for a surprise. For the first 6 hours of the day, I tried to get my engine's timing belt on and get everything to line up. Everytime it didn't line up, I just tried again from the begining. I thought maybe I had the tensioner wrong, or I had one of the gears wrong, or something. Everytime it seemed to be off by half a tooth or so.

Well after some heavy deliberating, searching the forums on how to do a timing belt, it accured to me that something very important had slipped my mind...

G4CS is a 2.4 and the 2.0 gears have to be remarked!!

Well I am posting this as a statement, but would appreciate this answered as if presented as a question. Based off the ExtremePSI picture, the mark is off by half a tooth further in the clockwise position than it is on a 2.0 gear. (Different color Fidanza than I have, but you get the idea.)

2.4:


2.0:


I counted teeth and used that logic. When I set my exhaust camshaft free, it still wanted to rotate one tooth counter clockwise as mentioned in all the timing belt threads. ASSUMING I am right, I got the timing belt done, spun the engine 6 times and everything still lines up, no valves hit, everything is very smooth.

You can see on the close up of the exhaust and intake cam, half a tooth clockwise would be perfectly lined up, and parallel to the head. And the crankshaft and oil pump still line up perfectly as well. (I timed the oil pump just because, the perfectionist in me wouldn't not let it be )









There is about 4.1mm protruding out on that tensioner, right in the middle of the fsm numbers of 3.8mm and 4.5mm. That took a few tries, I just used my hands, no tensioner pulley tool, to set the tensioner pulley. vfaq said I could, and as I had no way to thread the tensioner tool into the arm anyways, setting the tensioner pulley woulda been double hard even with the tool. Assuming the tensioner protruding the right amount out is verification of being correct tension, I should have everything set right I believe. Again with the blue loctite, keeping that tensioner pulley set for years to come should be locked in place.



Can someone, PLEASE comment on when remarking the 2.0 timing gears using the 2.4 as a basis, it was half a tooth in the clockwise direction?

How to Remark 4g63 2.0l Cam Gears for 2.4l Engines

If so, than here is the completed long block.


This doesn't really belong in this blog, but hey look at my 4g63 Oil pump pick up, pretty snazzy eh? I couldn't just cut off and leave half of a arm sticking out, so I did my best to grind it all down, leaving some there as to make sure I didn't put any holes in the pick up tube on accident. I like it though








Once I get verification on the base timing, I can look into the final steps and preperation for my engine. Wiring harness is at the point of needing the engine in the car to finish, and I got all the cool plugs for blocking up all the holes left from removed components from the vehicle. HUGE thanks goes out to Eric and Brian again for finding OEM plugs to tidy up the look.

The light!!! I CAN SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!!!!

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