Vitara 1.6i16v G16b Timing issues

[Mdkbaltas]

Hello Friends
Im from portugal and im a vitara fan. Your forum is one of the best sources of suzuki info.

recently i started to recondition my hardtop 1996 3door blue vitara G16b.
it has 140000km and i didnt know what service the previous owner had done to it so i started changing the timing belt and water pump. My problem started when after disassemble all surroundings and removing sparkplugs i could not set the TDC marks bt 2 notch because a very strong resistance with spring effect. Or in other words, when i was reaching the tdc rotating the cranck CW i feel a spring effect that reverse my rotation and didnt allow me to reach the perfect tdc.
Have any of you ever had similar problem?

Thansk for your help

[fixkick]

are you sure its G16 16valve or is it 8 valves.?
my web page uses USA years,
out side USA. the 8v engine was used for many years after 1995, up to 2004 ?

BIAS:
the 8v engine will do that and requires loosing the valve lash adjusters, because of the missing 8 other valves and 8v bias pushing back.

if truly an 16v engine and it pushes back ,the cam
then my guess is the I/E marks are wrong on the cam cog drive wheel.

please tell me valve count for sure....?

[Mdkbaltas]

Thanks for your quick response.
Im sure it is a 16v.
But even if the cog marks are wrong, the engine was working, and even before i remove the belt i was with the same problem!

Here some photos
What do you reckon of it?