Hello everyone, I just received my motor back from being built. I had my friend helping me do the install and to me it looks like he did the timing belt wrong. I dont know a lot about cars but I know some things. The timing looked on when you lined up the cam gears and crank, but the belt was super loose in between the cam gears. Soo loose to where it looks like if I were to pull it tight, it would be off one tooth. The car drove though. So my question is, if it were off 1 tooth, would the car be able to drive ok? I had my buddy tune it while the belt was loose/wrong?. And the car runs mint now that its tuned. Let me know the deal please. Would it run ok if tuned while it was on wrong?

 

Might sound silly, but why don't you just ask your buddy who built/tuned it?

 

Rotate the crank to get off of TDC and check the belt slack between the cams. If it is still loose as you described, then yea you should get someone in the know to check it out. I noticed the same thing when I did my belt, even on the old belt, that theres a good amount of slack between the cam gears at TDC. In my case, the cams wanted to "sit" rotated slightly toward each other @TDC, and that caused the slack. I could rotate the crank a bit and the extra slack would go away.
But if the motor has been broken in, tuned, and runs fine, my guess is that it is correctly installedl

 

I had the same thing when I did my timing belt last week. Slack at TDC but nice and tight after rotating. If you were off by a tooth, you would most definitely know it!