Hello all, looking for reassurance. I just recently installed a timing belt on a 99 caravan with the 2.4 liter. No matter what I did, I could not get the crankshaft sprocket to line up perfectly on the edge of the tooth with the timing mark on the oil pump. After the job, if I lined up the leading edge of that tooth to the arrow on the oil pump, the camshaft sprockets would be off by less than one tooth. I did it several times, experimenting with changing one tooth position here, there, etc. it was off by about 1/4 of the tooth on the crankshaft sprocket. I chaulked this up to a minor difference in aftermarket timing belts. The dealership told me that the marks must be "dead on"...even with aftermarket belts. The van runs great, so my question is, would a minor change in timing be detectable without ripping everything apart again? I'm kicking myself. I should have marked the old belt and their relationship to the camshaft and crankshaft sprockets and made new marks on the new aftermarket belt and did it that way.

 

I've never changed a TB on a distributorless ignition system so can't say this with any certainty but I would think the PCM would compensate for any small alignment error. In the days of distributors I could never get the marks aligned perfectly either on the few cars I did. I did the same head scratching for two days on my first one. Couldn't figure it out till a buddy came over and set me straight. I just got it as close as I could then rotated the distributor to "fine tune" the timing. As I recall the books would say the marks must be aligned or damage may result. That turned out to be an overstatement.

BTW - I always used Gates belts though there are others that are just as reliable.

 

If it is running normally with no check engine light I would not worry. Even one tooth off would cause driveability issues so you'd know already if there were a problem.