1996 850 glt cam and crank seal leak after install

[dosbricks]

As erik says, the divot in the head surface is no problem whatsoever, and in fact, to be expected. When forcing out a seal with a screw, the bottoming out of the screw is the whole "point" that pushes out the seal as the screw is turned down. The screw must have pronounced threads--not fine thread, and the drilled hole a little bit smaller than the screw shaft so the screw forces itself very tightly into the thin steel in the seal. All that to insure the screw doesn't just bottom out and push itself back through the drilled hole. A screw with a hex head is preferred so it provides the extra grip needed to turn it in, and a long screw will help to keep it orientated so it drives straight in and doesn't drift off to the side.

All these little details matter when getting these seals out, because in my limited experience, they are stuck pretty tight. The only place a screw did not work for me was on the passenger side output shaft of the trans-axle. There was no flange back there for the screw to push against.

Good luck on that exhaust seal.

[BigRed]

dosbricks, you certainly have done this before as you perfectly described the screw that ended up working for me. And for anyone else that may need to do this in the future, you probably already have one in your house. It's a screw from home duct register (which I had in my screw collection):

I used a box-end wrench to torque it down, and the seal popped right out. I wonder if it'd be advantageous to cut off the point, and round it off...

I do fear I may be doing this again, as the seals are positioned about 5mm in. Some say flush, cn90 says 4mm. At flush it didn't feel to have enough resistance. I could easily push it in further with just my thumbs. So I aimed for 4mm. But, as I worked it even (which I guessed was more important than depth) it ended up a little further than the 4mm target. I did add Permatex Ultra Grey to the outer lip as suggested by JDS60R as there was some light scratching visible on at least the bore surface of the intake side.

The Volvo 5449 drift would have actually pushed the seal in even further had I bottomed it out. I actually felt the PVC coupler was better at pushing it in as the Volvo drift seemed to push under the inner lip of the seal. Still, I found the drift useful for checking if it was positioned evenly as it gave a point outside the bore to measure from then edge of the block (will get picture).

[erikv11]

The install tricks that use a threaded setup are far superior to the ones that use tapping and punching, it is sort of a no brainer really and I should have mentioned this the other day my apologies, it is *always* how I install the front ones ...

e.g. https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums ... hp?t=66806