Am I screwed? I think so...

[Kenrik]

Ok so I was replacing my headgasket I took off the valve cover, PS pump, whole intake manifold (out of the car) Header, The four bolts on the front of the head to the front cover, Put C1 at TDC on the compression stroke, Took off the cam sprocket, (marked with nail polish first) and undid all of the head bolts in sequince... cleaned the surfaces put the new felpro gasket on and torqued the new head bolts in sequence, undid them and retorqued them.. so.. what's wrong?

it seems that the rubber block I put in between the upper tensioner as shown in the FSM came loose and the tensioner fully extended.. the chain has some slack I worried that the bottom may have moved etc.. IDK

How do I get the tensioner to go back in? once I do is it safe to just hook the sprocket back up.. I know that the cam/valves have not moved since I set it at TDC.. So the bottom and the top should still be aligned.. but i'm just a little uneasy about the whole thing... I don't want it to have skipped a tooth and ruin the valves.. What should I do?

if you could reply with any info, diagrams etc.. it would really save my ***.

Help!!!!

[benemorius]

If it makes you feel any better, being off one tooth won't introduce the valves to the pistons. Two teeth probably wouldn't either, but go more than that and you're asking for trouble.

Check the timing mark on the crank pulley to make sure the bottom end is still at tdc. Search the board for a picture of what the cams should look like at tdc and make double sure the top end is good too. (I'm assuming this is a ka24de...) Put the chain on and check the top and bottom for tdc one more time. Don't sweat it. You'll be fine.