I decided to replace my timing belt on my wagon since I do not know how old it is.

I lined up the crank pulley, the camshaft and the other pulley all at their marks, at TDC. I took the oil fill cap off to verify that #1 cylinder is on firing stroke at TDC.

I removed the crankshaft pulley and found that the key was completely missing, nothing there to keep the crankshaft pulley oriented.

With the pulley loose I rotate it around almost 180 degrees to get the key way lined up. But now the mark on the pulley does not line up with the mark on the plastic.

So it would seem that I need to rotate the crankshaft (I have the timing belt off) such that the crankshaft pulley marks line up with the keyway lined up.

What I'm concerned about is that the engine was running pretty good, a slight random misfire but with the pedal down on hard accel. it performed very nicely.

How could it have been 180 degrees out of time and ran so good?

I took out the #1 spark plug but I cannot see the piston through the hole, just the block. I don't mean that I see an empty cylinder, I mean that I cannot get a view of the piston to see if it is up or down.

Any suggestions?