E27n Valve timing

[Fizza]

I am dismantling my (petrol) motor looking for a bad knock. So far I have found an almost collapsed spigot bearing in the flywheel and I would love to think that was the problem but I doubt it.
I have the motor upside down on the bench and the next step is to remove the flywheel and the crankshaft.
I have found a timing mark on the cam gear but none on the crank gear.
The oil slinger in front of the crank gear makes it hard to see any marks but I don't want to try to remove the slinger as I think I would have to destroy it.
I have some valve timing data for the motor which talks about "valve opens....before TDC , and closes...... Is this BEGINNING to open, or fully open?
Do I persist with trying to interpret timing marks, or try to set the camshaft from first principles when reassembling?
I don't want to lose the relationship between those two gears until I am clear on how I will reassemble them.
I think the maggy timing will be easier to figure out but I would have thought that all 3 gears would have easy to read timing marks.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Fizza   (Bob)

[Fizza]

Since the above I removed the oil slinger and found the other timing mark.

Any advice

Bob is still welcome.

[cobbadog]

I have to tell you what I came across in reconditioning our 30c Cropmaster engine. Before the engine got to the stage of being lifted out I put #1 on TDC and made sure that the timing mark on the flywheel was there where it should be and that the rotor button was facing #1 plug lead. To pull this engine down I could do most of it in the frame so this is how I did it. Once I got all the covers off from the front I immediately went looking for the cam timing marks and found that they were not aligned. At this stage the head was off so I thought that maybe I was 180' out so I rotated the engine and still no marks lined up but each of the 3 gears had timing marks. So I went back to my TDC, checked the flywheel marks again and the spark as well. I then sat down scratching my head and other parts to work out what was wrong. I started reading my manual again, following each step to the letter and still no marks would align. Right at the end of the section was a brief remark which did manage to bring some lovely language out of me and basically it said that 'if' the marks do not align you may have another models cam gear in place.
Result was I cleaned up all the parts with thinners and the one gear that was not correct got a brand new double centre punch mark placed on it and then highlighted in white paint.
So if your engine was running well this is what I would do, make your own marks.

[winnock]

On this subject, many modern engines with an intermediate gear have timing marks that only line up every so many revolutions. The instructions will tell you to assemble the gears with the marks in line. In other words remove the gears and align the marks.
Hugh

[cobbadog]

In my case it was definitely the wrong gear for a petrol/tvo engine, no matter how many times it was turned over it would never line up.