Camshaft seal housing will not come off!

[newsance]

What do I do here? I simply cannot get this thing to seperate. And yes, it is unbolted. It will spin around, but will not pop out.

 

Is there some trick to this that I am missing?

[idosubaru]

there's not trick, never seen that happen before.

 

check the end of the cam shaft, right where the cam sprocket attaches. check for rust or some damage on the end that it could be hanging up on. remove the old cam seal then try to pull it off, sometimes it *kind of* hangs up on the old seal, but not really.

[newsance]

So after two hours of working it around, I resorted to prybars.

 

The damned thing SHATTERED TWICE before it came off. It is still nicely frozen inside the camshaft housing.

 

So, I removed the camshaft housing, and am off to a junkyard tommorow to get a replacement cam, camshaft housing, and seal housing.

 

Here's what I think happened.

 

I first found my oil leak after I had driven 70 miles on the highway. The gauge hadn't indicated any issues, but when I came off the highway and wind noise quieted down, I heard the lifters banging pretty noisily.

 

I pulled off QUICK, but when I came down to idle while pulling into a parking lot, I hear NASTY metal on metal sounds and the sound of the engine starting to sieze.

 

Luckily, I carry 5 quarts around with me in the back compartment. I dumped 4 quarts in, and turned it over to see what happened. It turned over very slowly and very noisily, then as the oil circulated, it even out, started, and ran just fine.

 

About 1 day later, the cam seal starts leaking horrendously.

 

So I think what happened was that the cam seal started leaking, leaked enough that there was not enough oil to satisfy the valvetrain, and then started running dry on that side. This in turn shredded the cam seal even worse, and the heat involved basically made sure the housing would never come off again.

 

The cam shows scarring on the lobes, and the rocker arms don't look good either. Not horrible, but definitely not good.

 

On the flip side, I am 95% sure I can replace the seal and put everything back together without taking off the center timing cover. I set the engine to TDC before I pulled the timing gear for the passenger side (passenger side dot up), and you can access the bolts for the tensioner from holes in the timing cover. So, considering the belt is already routed through there, it should just be a matter of putting it back together with the dot up, retensioning, and going along my merry way.

 

For those just joining us, I replaced the damned timing belts a month ago, so there is no reason to tear into everything again if I don't absolutely have to.