Is it the timing belt?

[striker2]

the water pump is most definitely not outside of the timing belt covers. the inlet to it that connects to the lower radiator hose is outside the covers behind the power steering pump though. here is a picture of my 97 Zetec engine on a stand with the water pump on. as you can see it mounts to the block behind where the timing belt goes and has the flange for the pulley sticking out past it so its run off the serpentine belt.

did you find this one?
http://www.contour.org/ceg-vb/showthread.php?105-pre98-timing-belt-faq

If you really do have a 96 engine then that is what it should look like and how to do the Tbelt, step-by-step. :shrug:

 

[GTXKen]

Yeah I saw that one and it helped a lot. My crank pulley has no marks in it what so ever for TDC. It had the three holes like the one in thee pictures but no notches or scribed lines of any sort. When I pulled the covers I also noticed that there was no spring or spring screw on my motor. I found it odd that the tensioner pulley is fixed on these engines and the spring is for install only.

Missing that the water pump is internal is all my screw up. There is a sheet metal like cover between the head and WP that kind of concealed the WP from me. There is a pully to the right or the engine that has what looks like a heater hose attached to it and I "assumed" this was the WP. It has 120K on it, hopefully the WP will last a bit longer. If I have to change it again I could do it in half the time next time around.

Some notes
With the cam alignment tool in place I loosened the cam gear bolts to get the slack out of the bolts.
When installing the new belt the crank wanted to turn to I had to be careful to hold it in place
My crank pulley had no markings (I had to check 10 times and asked my son to double check for me)

 

[striker2]

yeah, my crank pulley had no marks either. i used the TDC pin that came in the TDC kit with the cam alignment bar to find TDC.

 

[GTXKen]

yeah, my crank pulley had no marks either. i used the TDC pin that came in the TDC kit with the cam alignment bar to find TDC.

I did it the same way you did. It just kinda set me off since it was the very first thing I have done to this car since its purchase and every set of directions indicated to use the marks.

I just need this car to make at least another 18 months or 40K and I'll be pretty happy, I only paid $800 and its in decent shape, gets good gas mileage. Tonight I am doing brakes and rear sway bar links.