How to get that perfect (enough) timing during rebuild

It's so easy right now with the engine out of the car to do it exactly. Buy a degree wheel and a dial indicator and get it spot on.
A wood stick does not replace a dial indicator, LOL

 

Your pointer on the flywheel should be on the PM1-4 mark. Im sure some of our Honored Fchat Pros will chime in soon

 

1) best way, use a degree wheel, and ignore the flywheel mark.
2) second best way, use the mark (and it is not the one you are on now). It should be the | mark to the left of the PM14 word.
3) and then line up all four assembly marks on the cams with the cam caps | marks.

In the end, the 2V engine is not all that sensitive to perfect cam timing (because of its 2V design) so you will not really notice any difference. But, you will get to claim "I degree wheeled my cams"

Best wishes.

 

No:

1) the position of the cam sprocket can be adjusted relative to the cam using the pin and pattern of holes (under the washer and large bolt holding the cam sprocket to the cam), and

2) the cam sprocket can be moved relative to the (fixed) belt (when the crankshaft is at 1-4 TDC) by skipping teeth.

Using these two "adjustments" gives a resolution of 1 deg for each cam to the crankshaft per this chart (your 2Vi is a "late 308" with 3 holes in the cam flange and 5 holes in the sprocket):

 

Agreed, from your photos you are a long way off the best possible cam timing from just using those timing marks - you should be able to have them all exactly lined up. See yelcab's comments above about the flywheel mark, and Steve's comments in the following post about using the cam sprocket pegs to align the cams.

You can do much better!

 

You have the engine out of the car. It is very easy to mount a degree wheel to the crank hub and do a proper check of the cam timing, rather than just trying to get the marks close. Your timing is way off now at the cams and are using the wrong mark AF2 at the flywheel instead of the PM1/4 mark. Also, you should check cam timing with the crank hub/harmonic balancer installed and the crank bolt somewhat tight, as you can get timing gear movement on the crank, causing timing errors.

 

You are not tensioning the belts correctly.

 

I’m afraid I have disagree with my esteemed colleagues....
The purpose of the cam marks is to keep “stuff” from crashing during final assembly/cam timing...once this is done, there ought to be a “chisel” stamp found at the END of the cam and the end cap-this. This WAS the marking done at the factory.

A couple of observations: considering how cheap they are, and lubricating oils and additive packaging being such a contentious topic with a huge hosts of opinions: for $4-5 bucks each: get new adjustment “pads”, as there are clear wear holidays visible in your pictures.

That said: MAKE a tool using an “Apple cored” spark plug and a welded and tip radiused steel insert-this will allow you to obtain TRUE TDC. Forget flywheel marks-using a degree wheel, and a pointer, after installing your “tool”, SLWOLY creep up from one side until it “locks up”, reverse direction, do the same thing. Split the DIFFERENCE, adjust the degree wheel in whichever direction is appropriate,and repeat-several times, until the degree number clockwise and counterclockwise is EXACTLY the same
Now you have true TDC....

PRIOR to this-using the stock cam chisel TDCMarks, make the valve lash EXACTLY .020” or 1/2 a MM( check the spec in your manual, since my stroke, I am no longer 100% confident in memory recall-so...ALWAYS measure 3 times and cut ONCE: same for specifications...

That said: use go/ no go feeler gages, sacrifice four pads and have the back sides PRECSION ground to the EXACT clearance required for both intakes and exhausts to be timed.

With another CAPABLE assistant who can follow directions: start rotating engine SLOWLY such that YOU can rock the bucket in a circular fashion so that as SOON as it tightens up: you yell STOP!
Record your degree valu, then continue until it resumes rotation at CLOSING, yell stop, record value, adjust came timing as is necessary
REPEAT the process

It won’t be any more accurate than this!
Once done-CK it numerous times if you are a first timer at this process-then swap out the machined pads for stock lash value pads and you are done-the comp car method(old GES guy taught me this decades ago)
Good luck