Can I get a couple of lay, i.e. dumby, explanations of exactly what the hell Top Dead Center is? And also, how exactly do you acheive it? Are there any tricks or something? It's required for a couple of different procedueres, so what exactly did you all do to achieve TDC. (Sounds like acheiving Moksha or something.)

I'm gonna review this damned Haynes manual again to try and get some more specific questions.

 

TDC is the piston at the top of it's travel with all the valves shut [compression stroke]. If you're going by timing marks, you need to look at the cam gear timing marks, and line the crank pulley mark up with zero degrees.

 

The only way to find TRUE TDC is with a piston stop and a degree wheel. Factory marking on the crank damper and cam gears is not always perfectly accurate.

 

Degree wheels can be so much farther off than the factory machined pulley it's not even funny. Not to mention the fact that you can't really use one with the engine in the car, and once you've set it up you have to determine the error factor anyways...

For any basic repair or setup purposes, the timing marks on the cam and crank pulleys are just fine. The main reason for using a degree wheel anyways is to profile camshaft lift and duration versus crank angle anyways.

 

i'm just trying to change my balancer and timing belts

so these timing marks: will I be looking for them from atop the car or from under? isn't everything I'm looking for going to be on the driver's side of the enging ('97 Accord F22B1). I know that's where the big azzed nut was. Got that broken about a month ago and then retightened. Haven't been able to get under there and actually do the timing belt servicing. I wanna do it this weekend sooooo badly!

 

You should have marks like this on your crank pulley:

The white mark that is off by itself is TDC, and you line that up with the pointer on the block. The other white mark is whatever your stock ignition timing is, and the red and green marks on either side of it are +/- 2 degrees. The numbers in this pic are for a B18C, so yours will vary. Also, the actual color of the marks on your crank pulley will also vary. On mine, the TDC mark is white, the stock timing mark is red, and the +/- 2 degrees marks are brown.
You can see the marks on the crank pulley from above, which is how you would set ignition timing:

Look down toward the crank pulley, then look at the block, and you should see a little triangle shaped pointer sticking out. When the white TDC mark on the pulley lines up with the pointer, cyl #1 is at TDC. Your cam gear(s) will also be pointing up(with the UP marks at the 12 o'clock position.