Next I removed the oil slinger (it just sits on the crankshaft; it doesn't "attach" to anything; once you tighten the harmonic balancer down it snugs everything up. This really had me scratching my head as it just seemed weird that it was just sitting there loose), then reinstalled the balancer bolt and used a socket wrench to rotate the crankshaft until the marks on the crank and cam faced each other and lined up. Hard to tell from this pic!
Next I removed the camshaft bolt and pried the crank and cam timing gears off with my fingers.
At this point a normal person would take the opportunity to clean the mating surfaces with the gears off. For some magical reason, EVERYONE I KNOW WANTED TO STOP BY MY HOUSE TODAY, so I kept getting sidetracked, and put the new timing chain set on before scraping the gasket surfaces. Does that happen to y'all too? Drives me crazy. I need to get a garage hidden in the woods 5 miles out of town.
ANYWAY, now that I got that off my chest, my next step was to take the new timing chain set, line the timing marks up with the chain on, and install it as an assembly onto the crank and cam. The crank gear was a tight fit on the crank nose, so I had to gently nudge it on by tapping it with a brass punch.
Much improved!
You'll notice I had to cut off the blue part of my oil pan one piece gasket. I hated doing that as I have ZERO LEAKS with that gasket. But the last thing I wanted was to have to redo this whole mess, so off it went.