In these first two pics you can see the old seal. I say 'old', but this is a new seal on the newly installed engine. It had been on for roughly two weeks when these pictures were taken. Clearly the seal is torn up, especially on the top side. This, we determined, was the source of the oil leak. the oil was getting on the timing belt and traveling up the belt where it was being flung off as the belts turned around the top pulleys.
In this picture, you can see the backside of the gear that sat right in front of the seal on the crankshaft. the rubber from the seal is melted onto the backside of the gear. As best we could tell, the gear might have pinched, or at least was rubbing on the seal. At first Alvon was concerned that the seal wasn't seated all the way down on the shaft, and was therefore sticking out and rubbing on the gear. The closer we looked at it, though, it did appear the the seal was seated properly. When we put the new seal on, we slid that gear back and forth a few times, and it did not look or sound like it was contacting the seal itself, so hopefully the problem will not recur.
Here's a pic of the newly installed new new seal.
So far (after two days driving) I haven't seen any new oil. The problem started slowly last time and became noticeable after about a week, so I'm keeping an eye on it.
-- se
