With crankshaft sprocket on its mark, the two camshaft sprockets should line up. But this will not happen on every revolution of the crank. May take several turns, but it should line up.
I don't know why, but I have been assuming you just got this car.
No I got it over a year ago. When I bought it there were spark plugs loose, they were in horrible condition, coils were unplugged, there was all kinds of different things wrong. I changed all plugs and coils, fuel filter, ran fuel injector cleaner, oil change, etc.. It was running decent for the past year. Good enough to take me wherever I needed to go. 6 Hour drives sometimes..
Then recently it started acting up. It was very hesitant with the gas pedal, was sluggish, then it got worse and I couldn't even barely get it over 5mph. Backfiring and everything. To the point where It wasn't driveable on any main roads, it was just simply too slow and wouldn't accelerate fast enough to drive with traffic.
I did some research and had all the codes in hand. I decided it probably had a vacuum leak given all my lean codes and misfires. So I decided to change the intake manifold gaskets. Which I did successfully with no big issues.
When I went to start it back up it wouldn't start, it would just crank endlessly. Ended up being a blown coil on plug fuse. I changed it and it started up.
At this time that VVT solenoid had been broken so I went ahead and swapped it before I tried to drive it.
It drove better than it had in the past for the little amount of time I got it to drive. But that's when the stalling started.
So long story short it's been a pain.
I could check that timing mark and see, but then again, doesn't that just mean we're checking the timing? If so, can't we kind of rule out bad timing by the fact that It will drive without the belt? Or no?