Evidently the broken "key" on the timing gear CAN be fixed!

After spending the entire morning phoning every junkyard and foreign car parts house on Memorial Day (and heearing the wife repeat: "I Need that car!"), it quickly became clear I was really in a jam. Everybody was closed.

I finally got desparate enough to resort to attempting to fix the broken "key" on the crankshaft timing gear.

This is the small, rectangluar extension out the side edge of the gear which locates the belt guide and crankshaft pully.

Sheared mine off when trying to turn the engine a couple of times to check proper timing mark alignment following timing belt replacement. (didn't tighten the crank bolt & should have just turned the engine by hand, anyway)

So, during my mid-morning nap, it came to me that this "key" on the side of the timimg gear looked like it is a small, rectangular piece of metal that is embedded into a slot on the side of the gear, similar to a stud. (It isn't, it turned out to be cast with the gear.)

I figured I could remove the fractured "key" and insert something.

First, I removed the remaining key using a 1/16" thick cut off wheeel on an arbor chucked into my electric drill. (be careful not to scratch the gear teeth)

The gear has two grooves alonside this "key", so, I centered a 9/64 cobalt drill bit between them and about 1/4" inch in from the edge of the gear. Drilled it in about 1/4". Either this gear metal is soft, or these cobalt bit sharp. It drilled like it was wood!

Be careful not to drill to deeply. On the back side there already is a drilled out area that is there from the factory...

I found a small machined screw with a smooth collar, removed its washer, cut off its head and tapped its smooth end snugly into the new hole.

Worked great!

I am not sure how well I am going to sleep at night, though. After all, this process of drillling into the gear so close to the edge had me worried about the gear fracturing.

I do not believe the pin will shear....it probably bears no shearing force, merely locating the pully and belt guide, while the crank bolt does the clamping force necessary to keet the pully from twisting agains the pin. After all, the "key" was not intended as a "shear pin", like one finds on the propeller shaft of an outboard boat engine.

Thaks to "Balu" who called in the afternoon offering a replacement gear.