300D Timing Check

[DSlater]

When I line up the marks under the valve cover, the section of balancer that has the reading marks is still about a half rotation of the crankshaft away and the number one valve lobe is pointing to 3 o'clock.

From what I've been able to gather, being one tooth 'off' is equal to 18 degrees, which would seem like the ballpark my 'reading' is in. Exactly how is that possible? I've read what I can find about this issue and saw someone mention loosening the tensioner and using a 'wave' motion on the chain to bring it around a link. That makes some sense, but not really. It would seem that if you left a links worth of slack somewhere when putting the chain on, the chain wouldn't link up at all, and if a tooth was 'skipped', it would be too long by one link at the join point. Or do the chains not come with the correct number of links? Very, very confusing and frustrating.

I do not have a dial gauge or I would have tried that by now. And fwiw, the teeth on the cam gear look nice - square and sharp.