I am trying to fix a p03141 issue and in the process of inspecting the chain with everythign in pieces, nothing is lining up, absolutely nothing, everythign is off by a tooth in the opposite direction of a stretched chain, and it now even appears that with the camshaft locked in its tdc position with the pins up the back in the special holes, that the VTC actuator markings apear to not be lined up the way everyone on the net shows where the dot should line up with the arrow on the camshaft mounts, and there is less distance between the dot on the actuator and the cahin guard thing than everyones videos, so i recon my VTC actuator is also jammed in a strange position, and i have a little piece of evidence that may further indicate this, if i can jsut find out this one thinbg abiout the vtc system....

When I managed to get he VTC strainer screen off, i found 2 little scary bits of scraped off metal, like 2 littel pigs tails, i sighed and thought to myself, IOH WELL well thats not what im here for, and forgot about that and got on with the rest of the job, thinking that it was probably just the main bearings damaged a bit, which is tyical for my kind of bad luck.
So now im wondering, could those shards have actualy been form the the VTC actuator? prehapp the solenoid is actually after the actuator and acts as a kind of pressure gate?? that would seem silly as they would beallowing gunk into the actuator before the scrreen, but it woudl go hand in hand with the rest of the terrrible honda engineering im discovering, and would explain why these VTC actuators are a popular problem.