Thanks to the various posts in this forum that helped me fit my cam belt correctly. As a summary :-


Haynes state that the crankshaft should be put at TDC by aligning the crankshaft pulley with a shelf on the oil pump casting. This does not put the engine at TDC !
The correct way is to remove the rectangular rubber plug at the top of the bell housing (if it is still there) and set the crankshaft position using the flywheel marker. A mirror will be required as the coolant pipes obscure a direct view. This is shown in

https://www.fiatforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=50165&d=1221408885

Don’t do it using the method shown in the Haynes manual which is shown below
https://www.fiatforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1500&d=1100539187

The camshaft is positioned as the Haynes manual.
You can verify TDC using a wire down a spark plug hole, this will show that the oil pump method is wrong. My old Mk1 and now my Mk2 have shown the oil pump method to be wrong, its not a matter of accuracy, its just in the wrong position.

Another thing to be careful of is to make sure you put the alternator pulley on correctly if not the little pin gets squashed, and the bolts don’t fit and the engine doesn’t work. Search for cambelt2 picture in the gallery for a further details.

The 1.2 8v is a non-interference engine (despite what the Haynes manual says) so the valves cannot hit the pistons when rotating the camshaft independently of the crankshaft.

works fine for me using Haynes manual way every time. you must have did it wrong

There are a number of threads where people have had timing issues following the method of setting TDC by the Haynes method.
On my old Mk1 and my Mk2 the oil pump method does not give TDC.
It may be that it works on some particular cars (maybe with an oil pump from a particular manufacturer) but I can tell you with 100% certainty that it does not work on all cars.

Like Dave, I've never had a problem either. Possibly your using the wrong mark on the oil pump.

I came a cross one of those pin problems last night. Fortunately the owner hadn't crushed the pin, so a quick tweek of the pulley and the car ran beautifully, using the oil pump marks for the cambelt change.

Cheers

SPD

Haynes worked fine for me!

take the rocker cover off, long big screw driver that'll fit down the spark plug hole, crank it over by hand until you think you are at TDC, then crank over the camshaft until cylinder 1's valves are both closed, try sticking the timing belt on then, if it doesn't start, crank the engine over by hand to 180 degrees (so no1 goes to tdc again!) and repeat

I can confirm that lower marker is switched for one teeth UP, comparing to old Fire engines.