I've often considered engine building a voodoo art. My significant other has a 1989 Civic Si. It's a D16A6 but apparently has the head off some 1992 model. The car has to be e-tested before it can be sold so I decided to rebuild the motor as it was burning lots of oil.

The rings seemed pretty worn even though the cylinders showed signs of a recent rebuild. #3 was cracked in 2 pieces. So I re-honed the cylinders, cleaned up the pistons and put in some new rings. Now I've come to the difficult part of putting the head back on...

Do I need to remove the lower timing belt cover to losen the idler pulley? Since I had trouble getting the crank pulley off I ended up taking the pulley off the head in order to take the head off. I finally got the pulley off the crank so I'm able to do something with it.

Since the head is off some 1992 model (no idea which one) it doesn't look exactly like the one in the haynes manual. The Honda shop manual shows that the 1.6 head needs the pulley to be lined up with some mark but there isn't one. Any ideas on how to get this thing back together and working?

-Michael