1993 3VZFE camshaft questions

[Kleptic]

Greets,

In the course of replacing a head gasket I've come across something that I find confusing and hope someone here can shed some light on it for me. Okay, LH head gasket blew, tore the engine down and am now putting it back together. I've gotten to putting the timing belt on and noticed that the RH cams seem to be not right. The manual states that these cams should align at double dots on the gears. If I do that the pulley at the end is 180degrees off. When I was taking off the timing belt the pulleys were where they are supposed to be at TDC and when I removed the valve cover I saw that the cams were aligned at one dot instead of two. I haven't removed the RH cams from the engine so it's nothing I did during dis-assembly. I'm attaching some pictures of it and wondering if anyone can tell me if the cam looks like it in the right setting as far as the lobes are concerned. I really really don't want to put this back together just to watch it self destruct.

[Stillrunning]

There are two cam TDC's, compression and exhaust, make sure you have it on compression.

[73sport]

Because you didn't have the right side cams out (bank 1 by the windshield), I think its just a matter of confusion where the cam dots align the cams and have nothing to do with the valve timing in relation to the #1 cylinder.

With the crankshaft at TDC, align the RS and LS cam drive gears to the marks on the heads and install the belt. What you should see with the RS cover off is the both intake and exhaust valves are closed on the #1 cylinder. I would expect both the lobes to be pointed away from the lefter buckets on the #1 cyl while at TDC.

At this point, I would disregard the cam dots relation to each other as they were never disassembled.

Makes sense?

[Kleptic]

Originally Posted by 73sport

Because you didn't have the right side cams out (bank 1 by the windshield), I think its just a matter of confusion where the cam dots align the cams and have nothing to do with the valve timing in relation to the #1 cylinder.

With the crankshaft at TDC, align the RS and LS cam drive gears to the marks on the heads and install the belt. What you should see with the RS cover off is the both intake and exhaust valves are closed on the #1 cylinder. I would expect both the lobes to be pointed away from the lefter buckets on the #1 cyl while at TDC.

At this point, I would disregard the cam dots relation to each other as they were never disassembled.

Makes sense?

Yes it does, thank you. With the timing marks lined up cyl.1 is closed on both sides like you say just the dots on the gears are backwards. I'm guessing somewhere in this cars past someone replaced that cam's gears with one's from the other side or something of that nature.

Kleptic

[EEngineer]

there are two ways u can put in the rear bank cam gear i think

[73sport]

I'd say confusion still exists. . . .

Specifically, the Book says. . . >>
Insert intake cam. Insert exhaust cam Aligning the timing marks (two pointed marks) of the camshaft drive and driven gears. Done! Heads are done and cannot be un-indexed. This step is complete!

Install the cam belt drive gears, ALIGNING the Crankshaft to the camshafts! DONE! Nothing anywhere says anything about "The cam dots, the crank, the cams drive belt, the sun, the moon, the windshield wipers must also align!!!!

OK!

On another topic, laugh at this!
Anyone ever see this in the 3VZ-FE FSM?

Obviously the 3VZ is the power plant of the century!. . . . From Page 3

"Exhaust and intake valves are equipped with irregular pitch springs made of special valve spring carbon steel which are capable of functioning no matter what the engine speed."