What might have prevented my turning the engine by manually turning the front wheels?
91 Civic, manual transmission, here. I am doing a timing belt replacement. The front of the car is on jackstands, and I put the transmission in 5th gear. I freed the pulley bolt just fine, but then I wanted to rotate the engine so #1 piston was at TDC blah blah. I thought turning either of the front wheels by hand would, via the manual transmission, also rotate the engine. But no luck. I put the pulley bolt back in and rotated the engine to get #1 to TDC. As I turned the crankshaft pulley (via a socket on the pulley bolt), the front wheels turned roughly in synch with the pulley's rotation just fine.