One of my '96 Legacies was trickling oil from the front of the engine.  We opened it up, and saw it was time to change the timing belt.  The oil was obviously coming from the driver side cam seal, so we went to pop off the cam pulley, and the bolt wouldn't budge. 

We tried the rattle wrench, we tried heat and oil and the rattle wrench, we bought a new, compact 1/2" drive rattle wrench to rattle harder.  That thing was STUCK.  We finally put u-bolts around two spokes of the pulley, and fastened them to a 2 foot piece of angle iron to hold the cam and pulley still.  Then we put a pipe on the breaker bar, and hammered on the pipe while we heaved on it.  It broke loose without breaking anything!  The bolt had just a dark shadow of corrosion on the bottom 3/8" or so.  The bolt on the other cam was bright all the way down, and rattled out easily.  We put them both back in with a bit of blue loctite.  Blue loctite will come loose without heat, and it seals the threads to prevent corrosion.

Once the pulley came off, we could see why the oil had been streaming out: the cam seal had come out of its recess, and was probably 1/8" clear of the head, spinning freely on the cam!  The other cam seal and the crank seal both looked very good, so we left them alone, and just put a new seal on the driver side cam.

 

I'll add a couple of pictures later.

Nice work goodness what a beast!

If that was a 2.2 then they’re both metal.  2.5s can have one of the plastic cams (they can have metal and plastic) it may not be a bad idea to replace but obviously you’re done and won’t want to now. If you have to go back in though the plastic cams do occasionally break and it sounds like yours was subjected to a high load. 

Yes, it's a 2.2L.  There is certainly a lot of plastic on the front of the motor, but the cam shaft and pulley are all steel. 

14 hours ago, nelstomlinson said:

Yes, it's a 2.2L.  There is certainly a lot of plastic on the front of the motor, but the cam shaft and pulley are all steel. 

great engine, all the 2.2's have metal gears.  it's only the 2.5's have have some plastic cam gears.  a 1996 legacy LSI or GT came with 2.5 liters. 

Photos of the adventure:

The sticky bolt is the one on the right.  That shadow at the end of the bolt is  a little corrosion.  The bright bolt on the left is the passenger side bolt, and came out easily.

It looks as if I can only upload one file? 

Edited January 27, 20215 yr by nelstomlinson

The seal as we found it: it's come entirely out of its seat.

The angle iron u-bolted onto the pulley.

2 minutes ago, nelstomlinson said:

The angle iron u-bolted onto the pulley.

hey that!s kinda neat, i like the ingenuity!   on ej20's theres a place to put a wrench on the cam itself,  not sure if ej22's have that also

would a condition or instance of high oil presure blow that seal out? maybe a stuck oil pressure relief valve?

 

I had a sticking OPV on a Honda that I had pulled the pan off of and I guess being exposed for a while, the valve stuck. Didn't know until it was reassembled and I started it - blew a bunch of oil up against the garage door - popped the oil filter gasket.

1 Lucky, not sure what happened.  The engine was put in by a flaky mechanic I bought the car from, and I'm not at all sure he was competent.  I wouldn't rule out him just putting it in wrong.  The crank seal and other cam seal were looking good, so if there was high pressure, it wasn't bad in those places.

26 minutes ago, 1 Lucky Texan said:

would a condition or instance of high oil presure blow that seal out? maybe a stuck oil pressure relief valve?

usually age, aftermarket seal quality, or both.  90's seals, or aftermarket seals, are not as high quality materials as newer stuff.    in the 90's it wasn't uncommon to replace seals with a timing belt replacement or engine swap.  the newer seals are so good that's not as common now.

I had one blow out on the 90 Legacy I had.. just age as near as I can reckon. Definitely messy. lol