Tricks to Getting Engine to Turn to TDC - 99 Civic EX
 

So the distributor on my 99 Civic EX is needing to be replaced. Pretty simple, but I was wondering if there's any tricks you guys know of to get the engine turned over to find the holy white dots/TDC?

There is literally no room to get a socket on the crank pulley from above. Do I go below? I've got everything under control but how to get this engine to turn for me. Bump the starter?

The car currently has no distributor installed, if that matters.

You don't really have to TDC the engine to R&R distributor. Note that there are grooves in the end of the cam and the distributor driver, line those up on the same side. The distributor is supposed to engage only one way but with some persistence it can sometimes be put on 180 degrees out.

Crank pulley bolt can be reached from below, or from the side by jacking up the car and taking the wheel off. There may be a hole in the plastic inner fender to reach in and turn it.

Yeah the manual says to TDC, so I thought I should. This is my girl's car and her ex-mechanic father is out of state, so I didn't want to jack it up and look a fool.

I figured out how to get after the crank, but since I remembered the router position from when I pulled it, stuck the new one on same as the old. Running fine, this should stop the gremlin ignition issues she's been having. Thx

Make sure you set the ignition timing by jumping the service connector under the passenger side kick panel and using a timing light to make sure the distributor is in the proper position. (I recently had this problem. Swapped the distributor to a new engine. It appeared to run fine, but the timing was off and it got horrible gas mileage.)