hello all, so this is my first post. I have been a long time fan but just never got around to asking a question until now. Does anyone know if some of the F22A4 engines had defects such as cracks in them, or some kind of soft spot inside? Here is why I ask: I ran into a strange situation when replacing an oil pump on and 1990 Honda Accord EX. (Yes, I'm still trying to stick with this old jalopy until the wheels fall off!) When I pulled out the 3 bolts that hold the "rear balance shaft gear case assembly" to the engine block, I found that one of the bolts seemed to have sealant on it...but the location of the sealant seemed strange because it was only toward the rear of the bolt.

This seemed odd for a few reasons: My Haynes manual did not mention the need for sealant on this bolt. Also, why would sealant be only toward the end of the bolt? (so to give you a visual, pretend the length of the bolt is divided into 10 sections, with the first section at the bolt head and the tenth section at the oppposite, rear end. The sealant was covering only sections 6,7,8, but not 1-5 and not 9 and 10). This seemed odd because if the sealant was wet when bolt was installed, I assume it whould have spread to sections 1 to 5 as grooves pushed sealant closer to the bolthead, right? So it gave me the impression that sealant was never applied to bolt in the first place, but instead was already present inside the engine and was driven into this sealant. So how could that happen? This makes me speculate that someone knew there was a crack in the engine and had already squirted some kind of sealant into the block to repair the block (and perhaps this crack intersects with the path of the rear end of the bolt). Does this seem possible? Which gets me back to the original question: were there some F22A4 blocks that had defects that explain what I'm seeing? Or is there a more simple explanation to all this?