Hi everyone, I was wondering if someone could tell me why my timing marks are off by 180 degrees?

The car seems to run fine aside from a bit of rattle during acceleration upon heavy load such as climbing a hill.

I appreciate any insight as to what may have caused this.

Should I have a shop adjust it back to line up with marks on the cover?

The car is a 2006 S40 121,000 miles

Thanks

 

If your timing marks are actually 180 degrees off then you would not be driving your car. You might not be checking right if you are just going by the cam marks. You have to use the cam and crank marks.

 

Thanks, I just wonder why the marks on the cams are always in a different place when I stop the engine. The front cam mark points towards the grill and the other cam mark closer to firewall points down to the ground.

Does that mean it is not at TDC?

 

Can you see the crank timing mark? that will tell you when you are at TDC. Also the timing marks to use are on the back side of the cams as the gears can go on at any any position. Is it possible a prior shop did a timing belt and was sloppy about where the gear marks went? If your car is running then its possible its one notch off so spin the crank by hand to TDC and then look if one or both of the gear marks line up.