yea thats what i figured. I read the tsrm on all this. But it was a bit unclear as far as the lower timing cover and the front cover.

As far as the SST for the main seal goes. The oil pump drive shaft and the rear main seal both have the same method of removal. That with the knife and a tapped screwdriver tip. Since i already have both the main seal and the oil driveshaft seal, i can tell you they look no different besides diameter. So i see no reason, if im carefull, why i cant use the same method on the main seal. Ill probably use an Xacto-knife for the cutting making this process all the more easier and me less likely to apply to much force and slip.

ok well i got everything off, i went to pull off the oil pump pulley and the oil driveshaft seal literally fell off when i took the pulley off. So im thinking that was probably the leak. Im doing the front main anyway. I got a pic of what it looks like here, with out the main seal, and the new oil seal in.

Looks excellent. What are you using to install the seals?

The oil pump seal went in most of the way by hand, and the rest of the way i just tapped in with the butt of a screwdriver. That seal also came pre-greased. The front main didnt, so i need to pick up some mp grease and while im at the store i mine as well get something the same diameter as the front main to make installing less aggrivating and more successfull. After that its just reassembly, which im assuming will go together alot quicker then removal, especially with all the pulley trouble i had. Im going to try and smooth out the end of the crank a bit to make install a bit easier. When i pulled off the pulley some of it didnt go with the pulley, it decided to stick to the surface of the crank :dunno: .

I also purchased a turbo gasket set, and a exhaust manifold gastket. Once i run the engine with the new seals and see if my oil leak is gone, ill put the gasket set in because i noticed my exhaust manifold is leaking a bit, thus my boost(spooling) leak i was looking for. Alot of trouble iv been having with a engine that was just rebuilt by jasper about 30k miles ago. I didnt know the 30k mile warrenty they gave me meant "Hey we will cover you for 30k miles but after that its guarenteed to FUCK UP".

Wow, I never heard of that happening before (crank pulley) :outahere:

And as far as your exhaust manifold leak, I had the SAME exact problem with my car. In fact, I bought the car with the "leak" and I did the SAME exact thing you did, bought a turbo gasket set (because it has to come off) and bought an exhaust manifold gasket. When I pulled the exhaust manifold, turns out the last person to bolt it on overtorqued 3 of the nuts/studs and stripped out the aluminum threads in the head. I spent 4 days installing 3 10mm helicoils. I really hope your problem is just the gasket and not what I went through, but it sounds very similar to my problem. My car only made 4psi of boost with that "leak".

mine only makes about 5 lbs when its set to 9, and about 8-9 set to 12. Its a bad leak.

finished the seal replacement early saturday morning, only took about an hour to go back together haha. ALOT quicker than the tear down, usually how it goes :drool: . Anyways been driving it for about 2 days now, got on it a few times, seems the seal replacement did the trick. No way to tell really which seal it was that went bad, but im assuming it was the oil pump seal given how easy it came out compared to how difficult the new one was to install.

Overall difficulty = Easy if you have the correct tools

If you dont have the right tools you better have some damn close substitutes or this job becomes difficult. (aka SST's)