Cam Pulley Alignment

[chilkoot]

I'm 3/4 of the way through my timing belt/water pump change. the water pump and and thermostat housing are reinstalled, but while I was trying to get the timing belt back on I encountered a challenge:

before I removed the old timing belt I set it to TDC, with the L and R cam pulleys at 11 and 1 o'clock, respectively. They have not been touched until today. When I was putting the timing belt back on I tried to spin the L cam pulley a degree or two clockwise to get it to the correct tooth on the belt. I did it by hand, and there was a little resistance but as soon as the resistance gave the pulley spun to almost 12 o'clock. I tried to continue turning it clockwise thinking that spinning it counter clockwise would damage the valves, but I met a lot of resistance when the pulley got to 12 o'clock, a far cry away from a full revolution. This was spinning by hand so that I didn't damage anything if I were doing it wrong, I haven't taken a wrench to the cam pulley to try and spin it yet. The pulley now sits about 30-40 degrees past where I need it, is it safe to use a wrench to push it past the resistance (clockwise of course), or should there even be resistance in the first place turning the cam pulley? Will loosening the spark plugs on that bank help the cam pulley spin more freely?

Any advice is appreciated. After I get the timing belt back on it should be smooth sailing. I'll post a long thread on my experience with this DIY once I have everything back together and running, there are some omissions in the LexLS tutorial that make it insufficient for a full guide unless you have lots of patience and time.

[92Lex]

Spinning the pulley will not damage anything because it's a non-inference engine. Just spin the pulley counter clockwise to align the cam timing mark. And no, removing the spark plug will not make a difference.