I've never encountered this conundrum before in all my previous Timing Belt replacements.

On my wife's new '93, this is the first time I'm doing the Timing Belt on her car. I've checked this several times, but on the belt as it is before removing it, the intermediate gear is off by one tooth (the cam and crank are dead on, though). But it isn't skipped -- the belt is in great shape (though old), as is the tensioner, and the car runs great, really strong, at all rpms and also idles great -- none of the symptoms of a skipped belt tooth.

By the way, the gear is off counterclockwise relative to the mark -- i.e., rotated to the left of the mark, or, the gear's mark is one tooth above the side mark, if you know what I mean.

Whoever did the last change clearly installed it this way. And since the intermediate shaft only affects the distributor's rotor (but not precise ignition timing on these engines, which is done with the flywheel sensor), then either the one tooth doesn't affect the ignition that much (sufficient overlap of the rotor with the cap's contacts) -- is this so? Or else the guy has rotated the distributor to compensate?
So how much effect would one tooth have on distributor rotor position? Would it be enough to interfere with rotor-to-cap terminal's contact?

And what would you do faced with this? Either install the belt with the intermediate gear lined up right, and then possibly have to change the position of the distributor to get it to run? Or install the belt with the intermediate gear the way it was with the previous belt, off one tooth, because it ran so well?

Advice welcome.

Thanks all, and Happy New Years.