I am doing a cam swap on my little brother's 95 Formula. We are at a little bit of a stump point right now. We have already put in the new cam. Put on the new cam sproket along with the new timing chain. we left the crank sprocket on the crank, since the car only has 50000 original miles and there appeared to be no cracks.

So I have the crank sprocket dot at 12 oclock and the cam dot at 6 oclock. This should put the #1 and #6 cylinders at TDC.

Here is where I get a little nervous. There is like a "ridge" in the crank nose. I believe that is wehre the dot on the hub was when we removed it. Does that ridge/groove have anything to do with the TDC settings? I don't believe it does, but I just want to be sure while I am putting everything back together.

And in order to turn the crank to achieve different TDC settings, should I reinstall the timing cover, hub and crank pulley? Or can you spin the crank while nothing is on it, with the car in like neutral and a strap wrench?

Thanks for any help, and if you need pics of the crank snot to see the ridge in relation to the crank sprocket dot, I coudl email them to you.

 

With the dots together (actually, the crank gear dot at 12 o'clock), both 1 and 6 pistons are at the top of their travel (the cam gear dot at 6 o'clock is #6 TDC on the compression stroke). You can turn it all you want with a strap wrench or by the flywheel with it in neutral. Don't worry about any marks on the crank snout, just go by the dot on the crank gear.
Cam timing visual aid

 

Thanks Shoebox, that is what I thought. I just wanted to be 120% sure, before I started putting everything together.