I have a 1993 Toyota Pickup 2.4 2WD I bought new. It has 118k miles on it. A few weeks ago I heard a noise in the engine and the truck began running roughly. I suspected a timing chain problem. That might seem obvious except that my timing chain broke at 95k. The current assembly; chain, sprocket, guides and tensioner were all replaced less than three years ago. I had my local Toyota dealership do the entire job, including replacing 4 valves that were damaged.
I went back to the dealership. They first suggested that the problem was the distributor/plugs/wires/rotors. I knew that it wasn't, but went ahead and replaced them with no improvement. They then suggested that the truck needed a valve adjustment. That was done with no improvement. When a technician finally looked down into the timing assembly he saw that there was damage to the guides. The dealership wanted $825 to put on new guides and a tensioner. I refused to pay and took the truck home to do the job myself.
When I took the timing cover off it was a mess. Both guides were dangling on one bolt. The rest of the pieces were in the oil pan. The timing chain had chewed a big chunk out of the cover and had so much slack on the driver' s side that there was a 90 degree kink in it. I replaced everything in the timing assembly, as well as the timing cover. I am ready to put the truck back together. Now for my questions:
I really want to make sure that the crankshaft and camshaft are aligned before I turn the engine over and destroy the valves. I had #1 at TDC when I took off the crankshaft and camshaft sprockets, and did not move the crankshaft or camshaft any more than necessary. Before putting on the new sprockets and chain I aligned the bright link with the dimple on the cam sprocket, and the other bright link with the crank sprocket dimple. Now that they are mounted the cam sprocket dimple is at 12:00 and the crank dimple at 6:00. The dimple on the crankshaft pulley also is at 12:00. There is little slack on the driver side, and the tensioner takes out the slack on the passenger side. Is there any way I screwed this up or does this assure me that my cam and crank are synchronized?
My second question has to do with the original repair. They insist that because the warranty was 12 months there is nothing they can do. I do not believe that a timing chain replacement should fail after 23k miles, not to mention the original 95k. Is this unreasonable of me? In my opinion the repair was either done wrong, or the parts were defective. Is there another explanation? What should the dealership do?