Hey, I'm currently in the process of swapping from a b7 to z6, and the z6 that I got doesn't have the plastic timing belt cover on it. I'm assuming that I can just take the cover off of my b7 and put it on the z6, but my question is, are the timing marks the same on both the engines? I put the new belt on the z6 today, but from eyeballing it, I could still be off by a tooth.

 

To verify, you can use the TDC1 pointer on the block to align with the mark on the crank gear. However, you will need to remove the crank pulley to check this alignment.

 

yeah i have this diagram in my manual and i couldn't tell why they made a seprate one for the z6 for the cam gear. now though, it looks like like they have the same back cover, but on the b7 your supposed to line it up horizontally, while on the z6 you use the pointer on the cover, cuz if you notice, on the z6 diagram, the horizontal marks aren't quite horizontal, and they don't tell you to line anything up by those, while on the b7, they make no reference to the pointer on the cover, but by telling you to make the two marks horizontal to the cylinder head.

 

Which Z6 cover are you missing - the back cover, lower cover, or upper cover?

 

I'm missing all of the plastic covers, planning on just taking them off of my b7 when I pull it out tomorrow, and putting them on the z6. the b7 is shot so i'm just gonna rip whatever I need off of it. I guess i'm just confused by the diagrams. its not hard to do, I just don't know what to line the cam gear up with. the crank is straightforward, but the diagrams for the cam gear are a bit confusing.

 

My assumption is that the B7 and Z6 back cover are identical, but TDC1 for the cam has a slightly different alignment for each head. TDC1 for the B7 has the arrow up and the side marks of the cam gear level with the top of the head, whereas TDC1 for the Z6 has the arrow up and the pointer on the back cover aligned with the TDC1 mark on the cam gear. Maybe someone else can verify.

 

correct.

i'm pretty sure the reason for the 3 different methods for TDC alignment is because they all use the same cam gear but require different alignments of that cam gear. For that reason, they put all 3 engines' timing marks on that cam gear, and you follow the instructions depending on what engine you have.