Subject: timing belt replacement.
Q1a: is there a way to tell the crank position without looking at the timing marks on the pulley?
Q1b: do the keyways on the crank end flange (pulley attachment) indicate TDC position? say, at zero degrees on the slot, or zero on the pulley key?
Q2: top dead center means that the No. 1 piston is at the highest position possible in the cylinder and on the compression stroke, true?
Q3a: is it possible that the timing mark on the crank pulley is not aligned with the TDC due to some wear of the harmonic balancer (parts)?
Q3b: is it possible that the harmonic balancer (crank pulley) belt sheave has slid/moved/rotated with respect to its original position?

The situation: Without going into too much detail, I have discovered that when the crank pulley timing mark is aligned with the TDC (zero degree mark) on the belt cover housing, that the No. 1 piston is not at TDC, and is approximately 60 degrees off in the "advanced" position. This messed my head up because I was having some sluggish engine problems, so put a timing light to it and the timing was off by about that much. Real head scratcher: "how can the engine run with the timing off that much?" So I decided to pull the covers off and do a belt replacement at the same time. With the crank hash mark at TDC (Zero degrees) the cam marks were out by about 60 degrees and the distributor rotor was off from the dist housing hash mark by the same amount. In this configuration, I removed the timing belt and the cam shaft jumped to the correct position due to rocker arm spring force on the cams. Very confounding.

So that's why I need answers to the questions above: I can align the cam and intermediate pulleys with their marks very easily, but I don't know where the crank is except by looking into the spark hole to see TDC. Is it compression TDC?