Snapped camshaft at idle.

[Nevadan]

So I put on a new head and was going to start the car up. Prior to starting I wanted to prime the pump and get the oil circulating so ...... before I put the injectors in I spun the engine over with the starter until the oil pressure light went out. This took about 3 cycles of 30-45 seconds each. I put the injectors in and when installing the injection lines I dropped one of the injector pipe rubber dampners on the ground. When I went under the car to retrieve it there was a big pool of oil under the crank pulley. I only had time to pull the timing belt cover and the timing belt was soaked in oil.

I'll pull the valve cover, and if necessary the rest of the belts and crank pulley next weekend and see what happened. There's only a few places it could be leaking: valve cover gasket (it's the rubber/metal one piece and maybe I didn't get the front rubber piece in place), the cam seal (it's new and didn't appear to be leaking from there since I could see the seal through the sheetmetal cover) and the main crank seal (I'm thinking it's probably this since the seal didn't seem to go in far enough even though it bottomed out against its seat).

When I purchased the crank seal I purchased two of them in case I destroyed one on installation. The one I put in was a little thicker than the one I saved, probably a little over 1/4 inch. The one I saved was a little under 1/4. After pressing it into place the outer lip didn't seem to seal tight on the shaft. It also may be that I pushed the seal in to far and the seal lip that goes towards the crankshaft has rolled back and just will not seal.

Any other ideas prior to me pulling this apart next weekend?

[745 TurboGreasel]

If you have the rubber/metal valve cover gasket, all the studs need to be screwed all the way in to the shoulder, or they keep the corner of the VC up, and all your oil dumps out.
i think sometimes the cork gaskets have studs that don't have a shoulder.

[v8volvo]

No fun, sorry to hear about that.

Leak from the valve cover should be pretty obvious. Look behind the T-belt cover and see if it's wet on the front of the head. Unfortunately given the amount of oil you describe and the conditions in which it emerged I doubt this is the source.

Hate to say it but if the whole belt is wet then my money would be on the crank seal. I actually never replace those seals preemptively -- with VAG motors, just about the only times I ever see seal leaks are where one has been replaced! Sounds like oil's running out of there and pooling up in the bottom of the timing belt....

Could you have put a nick in the seal bore when pulling the old seal out? Won't be a fun thought but unless you find another source for the leak I would pull all the T-belt components off again, pull off crank cog and yank seal, and take a good look in there. What did you use to install the seal?

At least you know you'll get a chance to really nail the t-belt procedure down, after doing it a second time....

[Nevadan]

I also doubt it's the valve cover gasket, just hoping (praying??) for a quick fix.

Now that I have the proper tools and understand the process it will be much easier this time. Just having all the bolts and fasteners cleaned and lubricated will save about 50% of the time.

I pressed the seal in with a home-made tool: a piece if PVC pipe that was a perfect fit both inside and outside diameter, a large flat washer and the crank bolt. It worked beautifully.

I'm going to measure the depth of the seal "seat" and see if I just pushed it in to far, collapsing the seal lip on the engine side. I'm also going to use the "thinner" seal I have as a spare. I will definitely inspect the seal "seat" upon removal.

When I installed this leaking seal I looked in there and all seemed fine. It was difficult to view, even with the radiator removed but it looked o.k. When I removed the old original seal I'm fairly certain I did not scar the seal "seat" since I was able to grab the seal without touching the aluminum part of the "seat".

It's always easer to make the right decision looking back!!! One of my favorite sayings when it comes to decision making: "We look through this tiny little peephole up front and have an 8 foot rearview mirror! And then the justification: The reason I changed it is there was some dried oil/dirt in that general area as well as on that quarter-moon shaped aluminum piece below the crank pulley.

[Nevadan]

Note to self and others: The firing sequence (firing order) in the Chilton manual is NOT correct. It says: 1,5,3,6,4,2. The correct sequence, per Mr. v8volvo, as posted on this site is: 1,5,3,6,2,4.

After mounting the head and turning the IP as far away from the head as possible the fuel delivery pipes/tubes didn't mate up very well. I couldn't find the firing sequence in the Green Books I have but I had the Chilton manual. That manual is WRONG and cost me about two hours wasted time. Since the fuel pipe for #4 cylinder was the tightest fit I started lining everything up with that one and of course it threw everything else off. I didn't bend any of the pipes but it was quite a maze trying to make them fit. Even with the correct firing sequence it still took a while to get them all in there and the vibration dampers in place.

Once all the lines are in place it looks SO simple. Kudo's to the engineers for making all that fit in such a tight space.

[745 TurboGreasel]

I leave them clamped together as a unit

[Nevadan]

I have the correct 17mm injector and fuel line wrench coming from ZDMAK Tools so I can leave them clamped together in the future. That was a real waste of time and I won't repeat it again. On my 1.6 I test the glow plugs by removing the injectors and just looking at them; being able to remove the fuel pipes as a unit is part of the process.

A big "thank you" to the guys on this site for the recommendation to rotate the injection pump away from the head and perform the pump timing with the camshaft sprocket. It leaves plenty of room to access the injectors and just enough room to get at the glow plugs. This post #16 from v8volvo is the BEST description of how to perform the pump timing: http://www.d24t.com/showthread.php?t=930&page=2

[Nevadan]

I replaced the front crankshaft seal this past weekend in an attempt to solve the oil leak and it turns out even though the seal wasn't the correct fit the leak was elsewhere, see the details below. Since I took pictures during the job I'm posting it here since it is something that should be noted.

Per this picture you can see the three different seals I was working with. The two on the right are the same 10mm width, one of them has the rubber coating on the outside of the entire seal. The one on the left is the 8mm deep seal. I don't have a photo of the original thinner stock seal I removed, but it was probably 8mm.



The next two photo's show the two different diameters at the crankshaft nose. The 10mm seal would not seat deep enough to form a tight seal on the outer seal lip. This is just the dust seal but I thought it was causing the leak.




Here's the "tool" I used to install the new seal.



And here's the seal after installation. You can see the outer seal lip is on the thicker diameter portion of the crankshaft. The 10mm seal was still on the small diameter part of the shaft.

[Nevadan]

Here's my "crank holding tool" in action. The 16" adjustable wrench sits perfectly on the main body frame.



Here's the rear cam sprocket bolt wrench I made as I disassembled and assembled this several times prior to getting everything running.



Rothenbacher crankshaft timing sprocket. I purchased this for $7.00 as a spare but did not use it. I know his reputation but I have gotten some good useable products from him and this sprocket looks very good. I will likely use it on my 2.0 once I get around to that project.

[Nevadan]

And now the rest of the story. After replacing the front crank seal and putting everything back together I started the engine and it sounded pretty good. I looked under the car and oil was pouring out from the front and the real of the engine! I thought it might be the camshaft seals, even though they were both new on a newly rebuilt head. I removed the inner front metal belt shield and found an un-capped/un-plugged oil passage hole. Using a mirror I found an identical hole on the back of the head. I drove around town (in a different vehicle!) looking for a plug with the proper thread and ended up finding a 1/16" pipe plug a Summit. I completely missed these holes when I installed everything on the head, thinking they were mounting holes for a bracket or something!!!!! The solution is ALWAYS simpler than originally suspected.