Haha...nice thinking on the spot.

I had to use my wits too when I broke off the 10mm head that holds the crankshaft sensor. Its been zip tied in place for the last 2 yrs and 25k miles.

Aren't you excited to start it up??

 

I like the ratchet strap on the tensioner trick, good one!

I'm guessing it works best with the belt on?
Is that the old belt or new one?

 

Mantra, I do not discriminate. Zip ties have saved my life MULTIPLE times! Haha
I was SO excited to finally start it up and get it going. (Probably not near as excited as my landlord though)
Funniest thing happened...
I had the hood popped and could see the plenum through the gap of the hood when I started the engine up.
I IMMEDIATELY knew something was wrong because the engine began shaking violently.
I shut the engine off and started thinking about ways the engine could have jumped time and why it would have started up fine yesterday, but today its suddenly jumped time...
So I started it back up and ran around to take a quick look. I heard a repetitive "tik tik tik" noise and saw the spark plug wire on #3 cylinder popped off and was arking on a bolt.
Never been so relieved in my life

Marc, I refused to spend that money on a tool I was only going to use once That was a picture of the old belt when I had first wrapped the ratchet strap around. I wasn't even sure if It was going to work at that point. I just wanted to make sure I was going to have before and after pictures if something exploded so I could give yall a laugh haha.
I just used the strap to compress it, just as the tool would, inserted a small allen wrench in the pin hole and released the strap. I was grinning like a goat eating briars lol

Next step will be the valve cover gaskets. Unfortunately, they've been leaking pretty bad since the previous owner and my engine is disgusting from it.
I've watched tutorial videos and it looks like to fun so I'm not very thrilled about it.