2000 Camry 2.2L Timing Belt - Can't get balancer to line up to O degree

[grahams98]

I went through several excellent post on changing the timing belt on my 4 cylinder 2000 Camry. We got everything swapped out (water pump, tensioners, etc.) but can't get the notch on the balancer to line up with the 0 degree mark. As the crank is turned it feels like it's hitting something according to the mechanic who's doing most the work and won't stop at the zero degree mark just 5-10 degrees to the other sides of zero. He thought it was hitting the valve ala an interference motor which I told him it wasn't (correct?) we went ahead and checked the valve movement by pulling the valve cover and manually turning the top end which looks fine. I'm at a loss on this and could use some fresh ideas?

[71Corolla]

Definitely not hitting a valve, can't happen. One thing I can think of is the timing belt on the crank gear is binding up, not allowing the crank to turn freely. Easy to tell, remove the timing belt and turn the crank over a few revolutions. Another possibility is compression is causing the crank to move past the zero mark, remove the spark plugs to make sure.

And maybe find another mechanic, this is pretty basic stuff.

[grahams98]

Thanks but we haven't got the point of putting the belt on since we can't get it to stop at the zero mark. I had the same idea about the compression so we tried removing the plugs and that wasn't it. I'm wondering if the balancer could have been bent during removal?