Today I finished assembling my newly rebuilt 292 and noticed that the front lip of the front seal is very close to the front of the harmonic damper. I repaired the damper with the correct sleeve and I can no longer verify this, but as memory serves, the repair sleeve overlapped the original wear point by at least 1/8 inch. Now I can see that the front lip of the seal is in front of the repair sleeve and is right up to the small shoulder on the damper (about 1/4 inch back from the major shoulder on the damper). Its on the paint. I am not sure whether the rear lip of the seal is on the repair sleeve but it is probably very closer. Has anyone had experience with this? Several things come to mind. Is it possible that my new timing set is slightly narrower than the original gears? Could the seal area in my new timing cover have been machined slightly deeper? Is my new timing cover slightly thicker that the original? Is my new seal slightly narrower than the original (I have encountered this before with wheel seals)? Is my new gasket set thicker than the original (the original was paper thin as I recall)? Did I leave something out when I installed the damper - I installed the timing set and the oil slinger? Is this something to worry about and should I do anything about this? I could pull the damper, make some careful measurements and determine whether I could knock the seal back a bit ( I was careful to follow the instructions that said to ensure that the seal was set right up to the shoulder in the timing cover). I could fabricate a spacer washer to place between the back end of the damper and the oil slinger. I have not yet installed the fan or powersteering pulleys to see if they line up. I will do that tomorrow, which should confirm whether the damper is in the original location. To make matters more interesting, during assembly I was following Eickman and attempted to torque the damper bolt to 130 - 140 as he recommended. I quit at 130 as the that amount of torque seemed excessive. In any event the damper is well seated on the crank (I backed it off to 85 when I learned that Eickman had erred. Is there anything else that else could contribute this condition? Thank you I await your expert opinions.

I await your expert opinions.

Mark

1956 Mercury M100
1955 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan
Delta, British Columbia