I just tore down the front end and removed my opti which has died at a young age of about 18 months or about 10k babied miles. Now since my last replacement I have had an oil leak presumably from the WP drive seal. Although I did replace this seal using the common Sharpie tool awhile back. Looking over the seal it seems to have been installed correctly. However I am noticing a decent amount of play in the shaft. Enough where I can see a bit of oil... I will call it squeeze out for lack of a better term. But nothing is actually flowing outside the seal just kind of visible in between the shaft and seal. I would imagine with this thing turning at engine rpm, unless it was just perfectly centered, even this lil bit of play would cause a real oil leak.

So is there supposed to be play in this shaft? I remember really being able to move this thing around when the seal was out.

If it is not normal what needs to be done to fix this?

As always thanks for the help.

 

The water pump supports the other end of the shaft, that play is normal.

 

Well no matter what your gonna have to remove the timing cover to fix it. Mine had play in it when I tore it apart because of, yep you guessed it- a spun rod bearing. Lol. So my fix was I removed the gear, got a 30.6 mm freeze plug from advanceauto, used some right stuff gasket maker and I sealed the wp drive hole in the tc. Then I bought a csr ewp from summit. You can replace the bearing, but to me it's not worth having this problem again. Ewp and all I think I took care of that problem for a tad under 200. Just my .02 tho

 

Hmm. I have thought about the Electric WP but don't really want to go that route. Sounds like you had a bit more of an extensive problem.

Can any one else confirm if a bit of wobble is normal in that shaft?

 

Yes it's normal.