Well i got my car back together, with the new head on it, and it ran really good. I drove it 60 miles and now my cams are about one tooth off on TDC. The belt still feels tight, and the tensioner is holding the tensioner arm within the specs. I replaced the idler pully, tensioner pully, and its a new tensionser (except ive been contunually recompressing it about 10 different times). When we set the cam gears by turning each one towards each other with a wrench, they actually stayed there without the belt on it. So i dont know where to begin trying to figure out how it managed to slip a tooth in timing. I did the belt using the VFAQ site, and im positive i did it correctly this time. Can you only compress the tensioner a few times and then its no good? or am i looking in the wrong spot for my answers? Im sure my valves are fine, as its only off by a tooth, so i guess i lucked out on that. I know i had it set right at first, cause i drove to to work and whatnot, and it was smooth, quiet and had power, i went out to start it, it sounded like an exhaust leak, and had no power at all and the engine was idling rough. Anyone know what i did wrong this time??

Did you manually turn the engine with a wrench a few times and make sure the marks still line up? Also make sure you check your cam gears for cracks. That's how my valve timing got screwed up back in the day.

I did rotate it 6 times like it says, but i didnt wait the 15 minutes before i checked it, i just waited a couple. It drove fine for 60 miles with no problem, only after i shut if off and restarted it was noticable that it went off. The oil pump mark still lines up when the crank mark is aligned, so i guess it was the cam gears that would have jumped.

Is the auto tensioner only good for a couple of compresses before its bad (on a new OEM one) cause i ended up taking it off and on numerous times trying to get it right. I rotated the pully and took the slack out, and yanked the pin and when i checked it after rotating the engine, the rod came out about .16 of an inch, and when i tore it down again, its still where i left it.

Would it be related to when i rotated the cam gears into each other to align the marks, they would actually stay there when i let go without the belt on? Each time i did it before, they always turned back if i let go. It is a different head, that i put the cams in myself and i torqued them down to the right specs, and in sequence, so i dont think i could have screwed that up any.

I could just reset the timing again, but im kinda nervous to do that without knowing what would have caused them to go off in the first place.