Hello guys,
Could really use some help here before I decide to push this thing into a ditch and set it on fire.

About 2 weeks ago I started hearing what sounded like a lifter tapping in the engine, It would get louder with speed and would quiet down some when idling after the engine warmed up. Decided to go ahead and do the timing belt kit with tensioner replacement since all things pointed to that as the issue. Spent a few days familiarizing myself with the "how-to" and this morning decided to get it done. The first couple hours for disassembly went fine and I was feeling like it was going to go well.......wrong.

I got to the part about lining everything up before removing the old belt and that went fine too. I removed the tensioner and instead of the cam pulleys springing to 12 O'clock they didnt move at all. I put a socket on them and they eventually sprung to about 9 O'clock and 3 O'clock respectively. I read a few posts saying that was normal and to just pull the marks back in and get the belt lined up wit the pulley marks.....which I did. I got everything lined up and clamped in place and put a bar on the tensioner pulley and pulled it forward a little to get the new belt tensioner in place. When I did this, it caused the mark on the crank pulley to go out of line with the mark on the oil pump. I must have took the tensioner off 25 times trying to correct this and it would never line up right once the tensioner was put in place (not pulling the pin on the tensioner though, just resting in place). So like an idiot, I turned the crank back a tiny bit to over correct for when the tensioner goes on......same thing happened, the marks went off on the crank. After hours of frustration I decided to turn the engine with my breaker bar until the marks came back around again to see if the marks would correct themselves and now the lines are all off with the original pulley marks.

Bottom line is it seems I have royally F'ed this up and i need to know how to get back to a solid starting point. How do I get this back to a good starting point? Please help.

Thank,
JImmie