Acura Valve Adjustment: Finding First Cylinder

Video Transcript

"In this segment we're going to cover setting the engine on top dead center, cylinder #1. There's three different places you can pick up the alignment. There's a timing mark on the crank shaft which can be seen, it's the same angle you'll look down to adjust the ignition timing, both cams, both the intake and exhaust cam, have notches on them, they'll line up with the head, as well as an up position. And that's how we can tell the different cylinders on top dead center is by the location of that position on the various cam gears that will verify which cylinder we're on. And with the plug still in the engine, it may be difficult to hand crank the engine over because of compression, and if you find that to be a problem if you simply remove the spark plugs then the engine won't develop any compression and it would be much easier to turn it over. So if that's an issue for you just take the spark plugs out and it gives you a little bit of better ease of ability for cranking the engine over. So what I'm going to do is just slowly crank it over, watching for my timing marks to come up on the cam shaft sprockets, and I just slowly rotate it around until everything lines up. I'm looking for those up position indicators on the sprockets and the two top dead center marks. And most all the repair manuals will give you a good visual of what you're looking for. And if everything is lined up correctly you should see two, you've got two gears that ride on the cam shaft and they're about three or four inches in diameter. You'll see two long slashes and as those rotate around they'll line up together in the center dead even with the edge of the cylinder head. And to verify that, if everything is lined up correctly, you should be able to look down and see it on top dead center, zero advance on the timing indicator on the crank shaft, and also you should be able to go down and look at the distributor rotor, it should be pointing at the #1 position on the distributor cap plug wire. And that will verify that you're on top dead center. Please watch our next segment on adjusting the valves, cylinder #1."