OK so here is the update. I finally was able to tinker with it today and got one of the covers off so that I could see the timing belt. I took pictures but I can't figure out how to post them. What they show is the following (as best as I can describe). ALso to avoid confusion, my niece's now husband made marks on the gear looking things and had them lined up with the arrows, not the factory white marks.
1. going by his marks, one is 3 teeth from the arrow, the other is 1
2. the belt has about 3/4" play. I did not see any damage to the belt from removing one cover.
The bottom bolt of the left (facing the engine) was being a bugger and my back has had me down for a few days and I couldn't stand to be out bent over any longer so I never got it off to look at what's behing door number 2 (trying to have some humor along with hope).
Sounds like a jumped timing belt but a pic would help as was mentioned. To post a pic on this forum you first need to have it already hosted on a picture sharing website. I use Webshots for most of my pictures. Once it's on Webshot's site it's pretty easy.
1) click on the album containing the picture(s) you want to share. You should see a webpage with several pictures organized in rows & columns.
2) click on the picture you want to share. You should now see a page with just this picture and not all the other pictures from the album.
3) click again on the picture you want to share. This brings up a window with 5 buttons (download, full screen, email, & link to it).
4) click on the 'link to it' button. This brings up another window titled 'post this photo' and gives you several size options (100, 200, 425, 500, & 600 pixels wide).
5) click on one of the size options. I usually choose 600 pixels.
6) copy the link info located in the box below the words 'post in forum'.
7) paste that link into your post on 4x4wire. Be sure to hit return before and after that link or it will put that picture in line horizontally with your sentence/text. If you hit the return before and after the link it will insert that picture in line vertically.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
HTH.
