Honda / Acura Crank Seal Kit This crankshaft oil seal installation kit was designed for proper and easy harmonic balancer oil seal installation. The press cup is high quality anodized aluminum which will not damage the oil seal or the engine.
While putting my 95 back together doing a TBWP service I thought it might be useful to share a my method of seal installation that seems to avoid many of the problems I hear about in the forum.Tools:
- Lisle seal puller
- 7/8' steel fender washer
- square cut pieces of 1-1/2' ABS pipe, 1' and 2' long
- crank and cam bolts
- *optional ShinEtsu grease
I won't cover seal removal much since there is so much on the web, videos, etc that all work. I just use the Lisle seal puller pictured very carefully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrVwf6BHLTw Some use a shield fashioned from a plastic bottle to further protect the shaft, which makes sense if you need to get medieval with the puller. But the Lisle tool is not strong and will not pull a really stuck seal.
To press the cam seal, butter up the inside and outside of the seal, shaft and seal seat with a thin wipe of silicone grease. (I use ShinEtsu because once you buy a tube it lasts forever, but any silicon grease or even oil will work.)
Gently and evenly place the seal over the cam shaft end. Take the 1' piece of ABS and fender washer and line up using the cam bolt like this (seal is black in this case):
While being sure everything stays concentric, tighten the bolt (no power tools please!) until you feel resistance - the seal will bottom out when the face is flush:
The crank works similarly, except you use the 2' piece of ABS and of course, the crank bolt. Unlike the cam seal you do not bottom it, just make the front flush with the surrounding metal.
Some have reported use of a 1-1/2' ABS coupling instead. The problem with that is twofold. First, the diameter is too large to monitor concentricity. Second, the face is not flat leading to possible crooked installs. Note how you can't see the seal easily using this:
Be sure the pieces of ABS pipe are cut perfectly square using a carbide blade on a chop saw (miter saw) or equivalent.
Some forum members use RTV sealant on the outside of the seal in the case of damage to the seal seat, which seems reasonable. Since the outer surface of the seal is rubber coated metal it seems that minor imperfections would self seal and that is part of the design.