Got back under the hood this afternoon and pulled the front cover off the timing belt. Guess what?! The cam pulley mark is off 3 teeth counterclock from the cam timing mark, when the crank mark is at TC cover mark. But i didn't see any missing belt teeth, and the belt still looks good. Tension looked ok and the belt turned everything fine, at least when using a wrench. This worries me a bit. I thought that if the timing was off that the engine would still try to fire/turn over on its own, and just run like crap for however long. This engine does have a crank sensor, no cam or aux sensor this i know of. I took long enough today to determine that TDC on #1 piston actually matched the TC marks on the crank pulley and belt cover.

But something has me scratching my head. Consider this.... I always see it writ that when determining #1 piston TDC, there is a compression and exhaust stroke. But if the timing belt is off or broken, how do you tell? Inlet/exhaust/compression are all a function of the valves. If valves aren't working, no cycling of above.

Can I assume that one complete rev of the crank puts the pistons in the same up/down positions, every time?