I don't know why I have so much trouble getting my cam timing right after having the head off.

I put crank and cam at TDC, put belt on, and during tensioning I end up a couple teeth off on the cam sprocket.

Is there a trick I'm missing? And does being 1 or 2 teeth off really matter?

 

Even a tooth off and your engine will run like crap. What I did on my belt, I started on the side where the belt extends straight from the cam gear to the crank gear trying to pull it to the gears with as little slack as possible. The tensioner and water pump follows. After installing the belt, rotate the engine 2 revolutions untill the timing marks line up again on cyl 1 TDC. Check if the marks are exactly where they should be.

 

dude im running into the excact same problem with the excact same motor everything is at tdc i have done alot of timing belts on b series and newer d series but this d15 is kicking my *** only thing weird with mine is when i line both of the marks up on the cam gear flush with the head the mark that get lined up with the inner timing belt cover never lines up so im stumped think i might got it but gonna have a second opinion