The life-span of engine oil seal

Post by Marc » Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:53 pm

hemicat wrote:....Usually where the seal lip rides on the crank. You will find a groove worn on the end of the crank. When this happens you have several options. First option if you are lucky they offer a wear sleeve. This will fit over the end of the crank and give you a quick fresh surface and you can continue on. If not then you are faced with either having your crank turned or looking for a replacement...

The front seal on an ACVW rides on the flywheel, not the crank. A "speedi-sleeve" fix might work, if one were available - but I've never heard of one for the VW flywheel.
Sagaboy's flywheel shows some pretty serious pitting, personally I'd replace it if I was hoping to be totally leak-free. If that's not in the cards, I'd polish it with emery cloth and use an orange hi-silicon seal. Preferably a double-lip, but if only a single-lip could be found I'd put it in at a different depth than the old one (i.e., if the old one was only flush with the case surface put the new one in until it bottoms in the bore - or vise-versa) and cross my fingers.
The oil on the clutch disk got there by bypassing the O-ring seal inside the flywheel snout. That must be replaced, a new flywheel seal alone won't fix that problem.

The front seal on an ACVW rides on the flywheel, not the crank. A "speedi-sleeve" fix might work, if one were available - but I've never heard of one for the VW flywheel.Sagaboy's flywheel shows some pretty serious pitting, personally I'd replace it if I was hoping to be totally leak-free. If that's not in the cards, I'd polish it with emery cloth and use an orange hi-silicon seal. Preferably a double-lip, but if only a single-lip could be found I'd put it in at a different depth than the old one (i.e., if the old one was only flush with the case surface put the new one in until it bottoms in the bore - or vise-versa) and cross my fingers.The oil on the clutch disk got there by bypassing the O-ring seal inside the flywheel snout. That must be replaced, a new flywheel seal alone won't fix that problem.