Is it safe to rotate the crankshaft?
 

I know there are plenty of posts on how to put the timing components back on.. but what i wanted to know is with my heads off, lifters and oil pump drive out, with the cam BACK IN is it safe to rotate the crankshaft so that the timing marks line up on the sprockets?

Sure - is there another way to line them up?

Well i guess it doesnt hurt to ask.. my first cam swap.

No problem. You'll have to rotate again when assembling your valvetrain. What was the concern, if I may ask?

Rookie question... I guess afraid that something would be thrown off it stuffs rotated without all the valvetrain installed. I was pretty sure it would be OK, but like i said.. i'd rather ask and be sure since the budget is so tight.

Nope, the only way to throw stuff off (of timing, at least) is to misalign those dots. Make sure they're lined up, then rotate the crank 2 full turns clockwise, and be sure they line back up.

Thank you. How dead on do they need to be? Perfectly aligned over one another?

Pointing straight at each other. Crank pointed straight up, cam pointed straight down.

This look right?
 

Well got the timing chain back on, but wanted to know if things looked right.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3245/...09e6bc.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/...dfb1d3.jpg?v=0

Yes. Be sure to do a good job of cleaning those gasket surfaces.

Thanks. Probably cant see it from the pic but i've pretty much scraped the holy heck out of the timing cover surface.. i still need to take some thiner to the head gasket surface though.

Shoebox's site has an awesome animated gif of the cam/sprocket timing mark configurations and the corresponding piston positions.

I don't want to hotlink to it since its fairly large and don't want to suck his bandwidth, but it is easy to find and worth a look at if you feel nervous at all.