I'm in the process of changing my timing belt and I think I have it at TDC but I'm not sure. I have the Crank pulley notch lined up with the arrow on the plastic cover and the cam gears both have the silver oblong thing with the larger holes are parallel with each other but cylinder #1 is at the bottom of it's stroke and not the top. Does #1 not have to be at the top on these engines?

 

I forget which cylinder is the reference cylinder for this car - on my Nissans, it's always been cylinder #1, but for some reason I thought it was cylinder #2 on the Audi (someone want to correct me here if possible?). Whichever cylinder it is (which should be searchable), what I did on the Nissans was to remove the coil pack and plug on that cylinder, and put my hand over the hole. I had a friend jog the ignition (very quick on-off turns to power-crank the engine over) until I felt a blast of air against my hand - that's how I knew I was on the compression stroke of that cylinder. Then from there, I'd insert a very long screwdriver down the plug hole until it rested on the top of the piston. By hand, I then turned the engine over using a socket on the crank pulley and watched the screwdriver rise up until it hit TDC. At that point, fine-tune your positioning using the timing reference marks. That (for me) was the best way to ensure I had TDC, compression stroke, on the #1 cylinder (which was what Nissan called out as the proper reference point for the engine).

Auditech79, wanna pop in on here and correct any of this with relation to Audi's procedure so he has the proper info?

 

If the cams are lining up with the cam lock bar and the crank is lined up with little knotch on the crank pulley then it really doesn't matter. Just make sure the crank pulley doesn't have a scratch in it that might be fooling you in thinking you are180 degrees off, but i really doubt it.

 

My Cam bar and crank tool will be here tomorrow so when I get them set it doesn't matter where the engine is as long as it doesn't move right?

 

Absolutely, the crank holder tool really isn't needed IMO, i've never had the crank turn on me but if it makes ya feel more comfortable go ahead and use it. Its a PITA to get the crank holder in though. [:@]

 

FYI. TDC on the 2.8 DOHC refers to Cylinder #3.