Behind the leaking water pump lurked a leaking camshaft seal. For just a few dollars, I was able to replace this component and since everything else was apart, it made sense to do this extra bit of work. Such is the slippery-slope of repairs: fixing something makes apparent what needs to be fixed next. Then, because things are apart, you might as well fix... it's difficult to stop. In fact, I'm resisting replacing the starter; it works fine, but since it's exposed anyway, it's not that much additional work (just four bolts!) and only about $90... I'll stop.
We got into this thinking with our house: shopping for a canister set morphed into remodeling the kitchen. Planted a few flowers and ended with a medium-scale landscaping job. In a way, I resist starting projects because that's the easiest way for me not to fall into the "marginal effort" trap. And that's a problem in and of itself.
Right tool for the job
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| Sounded better than it worked |
I've never replaced a seal before, this was new territory for me. I took the advice of the internet and purchased a camshaft seal puller for the job. I couldn't get this tool to do much good because the positioning of the camshaft left me little room for leverage. I ordered this from Amazon, because it was inexpensive (about $15) versus other vendors and nobody close had this tool in stock. I had Prime, so the two day delivery took about a week.
For some reason, even though Amazon was the vendor, it took about 4 days of "getting ready for shipping", so while the elapsed time was 5 or so days, the shipping was still "two days". This is the frustrating part about Amazon, I find myself going there because I think shipping will be better/faster but when I order from EBay/RockAuto, the parts arrive quickly and at a total cost that's about the same as Amazon, without the $100 annual fee. I get value from Prime in other ways: the Jazz station on Amazon Radio is fantastic and the video on demand seems to be better than Netflix these days. But for shipping alone, Amazon Prime isn't much of a bargain.
The wait for delivery cost me a week of time, as I needed to replace the seal before reassembling the rest of the cooling system. Since the engine wasn't running and the car was propped up on some ramps, I couldn't do much to reposition the car for other repair work like replacing the paper-thin rear brakes.
Actual tools for the job
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| Actual seal pullers, bonus Rorschach oil stain |
In the end, I used a pick and small screwdriver to pull the seal out, with the pick doing most of the work. The seal puller was both a waste of time and money for this job. Using the the pick and screwdriver, I was able to get around the seal and get a good grip for extraction. Unlike the water pump, by examination there was no "look right there!" problem with the old part, other than the accumulation of oil on the engine block underneath the seal.
Before replacing the seal, I put a bit of oil on the outside and inside surfaces and pushed the part into place. This required a bit of wiggling and I used my small screwdriver to make sure the seal was correctly/evenly seated around the camshaft. I then used a 1 1/16 socket on an extension as my seating tool gently tapping the seal into place with a hammer. I've been finding some combination of a hammer plus another tool has been very handy thus far in this little project of mine.
Done!
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| New seal, hopefully no leaks! | |
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There's no way for me to test if this is properly done before assembly, so I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best. No doubt, more leaks exist, so it will be difficult to know if this replacement made a difference -- but I'll keep my fingers crossed!
With a little clean-up of the image, here's a comparison between the old (black) and new (red) seals. Looking closely, the black seal has damage from the removal process but otherwise looks "OK". I don't have a before picture of the area around the seal, but it did have a considerable oil accumulation. I'm just happy leak from the water pump didn't result in water going through the seal, as that would have much harder on the engine.
This being done, I'm ready to attach the water pump and next the coolant manifold and refill the system. Once completed, the engine will be in running order again.
