randal

I used the crank seal that came with my ebay kit. I think it was LYO. Then I used FelPro cam seals. I bought one from an ebay seller which was Aisin water pump, tensioner pulley and idler pulley. When I went to put the tensioner pulley on and torqued it down, it would not longer "flop" (move) and was restricted. I determined that the shaft body was just a tad too wide for the bolt and the shoulder of the bolt would not stick far enough through the body. So, I took the pulley off of the new assembly and bolted it onto the body of the old assembly and problem solved.

Which ebay timing belt kit did you buy?

ES330MD05

It was a good kit (Aisin water pump, Mitsuboshi timing belt and all other OEM parts except seals). eBay seller said they sent those seals by mistake.

ES330MD05

So, I bought seals at Lexus dealership and got the work done. I have those LYO seals that came with the kit from eBay with me. If anybody is interested, I will give it away.

smithks1

how long did it take to complete the job?

mitmaks

Excellent write up

randal

Just the seal? About 10 minutes excluding scrounging around for the PVC pipe to make a tool.
The entire timing belt, water pump, tensioners, etc takes me about 6 hours to disassemble and about 8 hours to put back together (I go kinda slow cause I do not want to make any mistakes and I am not a professional mechanic).

kcarl

I changed all the timing components (including cam and crank seals) in my 01 ES300 about 30k miles ago. Recently noticed oil leaks, so took it apart. Found leaky crank seal and 1 leaky cam seal. Couldn't use the screw removal trick on cam seal, but did on crank. Seals are Timken.

After removing the 2 bad seals, I noticed that the inner lip, that is compressed by the inner seal spring, was folded in, and the spring was partially outside the lip. The folded area was about 1/2" long for both seals. I'm sure this didn't happen during removal of the seal, because there were well-formed crease marks in the seal where the spring had slipped out. I am assuming this happened during installation.

When replacing a seal, I lube the seal and shaft, and gently slip them on. Is there anything else I can do to ensure this doesn't happen again? There is no way to know if the lip has flipped after it is installed. Also, does anyone know of a easy way to install the cam seals, and should the outer surface of the seal be flush with the head surface or bottomed out in opening?

Thanks,
Kcarl

LeX2K

As long as you keep the seal straight when pressing it in, the spring and seal lip won't roll over and will go in properly. The seal is supposed to be pressed all the way into the bore. The foolproof way is to remove the valve covers and then remove the cam bearing cap, the seal will come out and go in very easily. But of course that's much more work, only practical if the valve cover gaskets are leaking.

Rotating the seal back and forth as you are initially getting it into place also helps. Take the time to clean the cam with a q-tip and alcohol, lacquer thinner or acetone.