always ignore the intermediate shaft marks, they almost never line up. line the rotor arm up with the notch in the dizzy instead! The intermediate shaft sprocket marks are unimportant, what matters is the position of the distributor, you have probably moved the dizzy a fair bit out of line, further proof of this is that your car is now slow!
If you have the plastic timing belt cover then you should be able to line up a mark on the cam sprocket with the OT mark on the inner face of the belt cover, but this is not always the case. My 90spec GTI didnt have a cam sprocket OT mark either! In this case you have to take off the inner cover and rocker cover, then line up the punch mark on the rear face with the head surface. When this is lined up the cam lobes should point up & away from each other like so: |\ /|
If the cam lobes dont line up with either the punch mark on the inside face or the outer OT marks then someone has probably put the cam sprocket on the wrong way round, take it off, flip it round, and recheck the marks.
Next you should have a line on the crank pulley which lines up with an arrow on the lower belt cover, once you get that lined up take out the green cap from the top of the gearbox, it unscrews but can be a pain to remove. I use a hammer & screwdriver to tap it round, patience & perseverance are the key! Once out you should see the flywheel timing marks, if not either the flywheel is on wrong, or the crank pulley is on wrong! There is a small punch mark, this is the TDC mark and you should always use this instead of the crank pulley marks if possible as its much more accurate. The large arrow/diamond on the flywheel is the ignition timing mark, we'll get to that in a bit.
If the punch mark is nowhere to be found, take out sparkplug #1 and shine a torch down there, if you cant see the piston spin the crank over till you see it reach the top of the bore, then re-check the flywheel mark. If the piston is at the top and the punch mark isnt there then someone has put your flywheel on wrong, which is a pain in the arse but not the end of the world. Go back to the crank pulley marks, you'll have to use these instead! Mark the arrow and line with tipex, try to get the line as fine as you can to help accuracy later on.
Still with me? Good! On to the distributor. Pop off the dizzy cap and note the position of the rotor arm. If you look around the edge of the distributor there should be a mark, its hard to see biut it is there. Check the plastic dust cap under the arm, it has a notch cut out of it so you can see this line, it might help to take the rotor arm & dust cap off and give the dizzy a good clean. Once you have located the notch, you need to spin the dizzy round till it lines up with the rotor arm. Loosen the clamp bolt and if you're lucky the dizzy will turn, if not you'll need to dig out the crud from around the base of the dizzy and drown it in proper penatrating oil. Leave if for a while then get some mole grips round the stem of the dizzy. I find gently tappign the mole grips with a hammer helps to shock it loose, ratrher than trying to spin it by hand.
Once the dizzy is free, line it up and nip the clamp bold down to stop it spinning when the engine is started. If the dizzy wont line up without the hall sensor plug hitting the block, you'll have to move the intermediate shaft a bit, but since you lined it up earlier it should be ok!
Once all 3 are lined up, tigten up the belt tensioer till the belt has 90mm twist at the longest part, and spin the engine over by hand 360 degrees. Recheck the marks & tension, adjusting accordingly.
Now put the engine back together again and set up the ignition timing as per my digifant FAQ! If you found your flywheel marks were not aligned, or the gearbox plug wouldnt come out, you need to buy a more expensive timing light that can also check ignition advance & retard. Set it to 6 degrees BTDC and use the marks on the crank pulley that you made earlier
