B20Zer

Pulled off the covers off my B20z engine to do the waterpump and I noticed oil weeping at the camshaft seals and front crankshaft seal.
How much weeping is acceptable before it's wiser to replace the seals?
And can the camshaft seals be replaced without pulling the head off, there's no straight/line of sight access to the camshaft seals, it may be tricky to put them in straight?

solorex

Lol. You need to replace your seals. Yes the cam seals can be replaced without taking the head off. Get yourself a Helms or Honda manual.

B20Zer

Thanks, the vehicle has 135,000 miles on it and these are probably the original seals, you would expect some oil weeping past the camshaft seals after all that time or should it be bone dry there if the seal was still 100%?

The crankshaft seal I do think needs replacing for sure, the camshaft seals I thought I may as well do now seeing they are pushing 20yrs old.
Under ideal conditions how long can oil seals last for?

Does anyone know if the original Honda camshaft seal part is it a high temp seal?
I can get a high quality SKF seal for a quarter of the price of the genuine Honda part but it's just plain old nitrile.

DumpdEJ6

Pro tip: use a wine corkscrew to pull the old seals out without scratching the surfaces, then oil up the surfaces of the new seals (they may come pre-greased anyway) and gently tap them in with either a large socket, or, as I usually do, a 1/8" ratchet extension, working my way around the seal just tapping lightly until it's seated where the old one was and straight.

For seals I usually go NOK brand.

B20Zer

Thanks for the tip, you use the 1/8"(do you perhaps mean a 1/4" didn't know you can get as small as 1/8") ratchet extension on it's own to tap in the seal?

I can get NOK seals at almost a tenth of the same OE Honda seal but the NOK seal is Nitrile and only good up to 80 degrees centigrade, won't that fail prematurely in the camshaft or crank location which may easily be around 80 or above?

DumpdEJ6

Yeah I meant 1/4" drive ratchet extension, oops! All I know is that I've used NOK seals for every car I've worked on (probably hundreds by now) and never had a problem with, uh, premature...leakage.

B20Zer

But in the engine you can't use the normal NOK nitrile seals(typically jet black seal), do you use the NOK high temperature seals?
The Nok high temp seals are apparently good in the engine but the local supplier didn't have stock in the sizes I need.

B20Zer

DumpdEJ6 thanks for the 1/4" drive ratchet extension tip, worked like a charm

Turns out NOK is the OEM brand for OE Honda oil seals, all 3 OE Honda seals I got were NOK, so if your local bearing shop has the NOK high temp seals you may as well save the bucks and get them there, should be well below half of Honda OE.