After several days and many more shattered T50 driver bits I was successful in removing my rear crankshaft seal and installed the new seal purchased from IDParts and in accordance with the manufacture specifications. After torquing down the flex plate hub bolts I noticed that I am no longer able to turn the engine over by hand as I was able to do easily before. In fact, not even with a breaker bar and 2FT section of pipe on the front fly nut would it even budge. I am concerned about incurring damage by adding additional force.

Per the specifications, I installed the new seal as a single unit and did not apply any grease or oil to the slip plane surface. My suspicion is that the new seal simply has increased friction that will loosen up over time however I have never encountered this much resistance in a seal before. I have walked myself back through the assembly instructions and cannot determine anywhere where I may have made a mistake.

Has anyone encountered this problem or have any suggestions?

Thanks.

IIRC there are some shims associated with that seal that are very hard to see and if omitted on reinstall can cause issues. For confirmation you need to check with someone like SirSam who has likely been into that area.

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Sold to LOST member my 05 Ltd, GDE Stg II turbo + TCM tune, SunCoast TC w. Transgo kit, Steiger window regulators, Samcos, Fumoto valve, 2nd gen filter head with Lub. Spec. bleeder, Hayden clutch & 11 blade fan, inverted spare, P-1 battery, BF Goodrich Long Trail TAs, Etecno1 glow plugs, timing belt at 50K miles/8 yrs

If you removed the rear bearing support its possible the crankshaft thrust washer has become displaced? Very little is mentioned about this in the FSM. When installing the support, new thrust washers should be used to obtain the correct forward and aft play.

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2005 KJ RENAGADE 2.8 CRD 6 SPEED NP242 FULLTIME 4X4

Copy that, thanks guys. I'll see if I cant get in touch with SirSam. As for the rear bearing support, I didnt touch it nor did I notice any shims, I simply pried out the old seal, cleaned things up a bit and then tamped in the new seal with a rubber mallet. Seemed pretty straight forward to me.

I am still drawing a blank on this one.
After loosening the flex plate hub bolts and removing it the crank spins beautifully with almost no effort. The seal seems to be seated fine and rotates with the crank as expected.

I replaced the hub and bolts and tightened very lightly, basically just letting the weight of the ratchet torque them down in a cross pattern to seat the hub, still no problem, rotates just as smooth as before.

However, once I tighten the bolts up the first prescribed 37 lbs-ft spec everything is locked and I cant even budge the thing. It makes no sense because as far as I can tell the hub and seal rotate together so I cant understand why tightening it would affect anything.

Pretty frustrating, I attempted to message SirSam however it does not seem like my messenger is working as I have no sent items in my outbox. If anyone could rack their brain on this I would greatly appreciate it. I spoke with a CRD mechanic and he said it was a first for him.

Thanks!

Sometimes PMs are a bit odd but in any case if you attempt to send one then immediately check you Outbox to confirm that the message is there; it will stay or should stay in your outbox until read. If PM is not working try SirSam's email link.

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Sold to LOST member my 05 Ltd, GDE Stg II turbo + TCM tune, SunCoast TC w. Transgo kit, Steiger window regulators, Samcos, Fumoto valve, 2nd gen filter head with Lub. Spec. bleeder, Hayden clutch & 11 blade fan, inverted spare, P-1 battery, BF Goodrich Long Trail TAs, Etecno1 glow plugs, timing belt at 50K miles/8 yrs

Did you by chance email me instead of PM? Someone emailed me recently about this so I'm thinking it was you.

In any case my reply was something to the effect of "I haven't done this but I have heard of others having the same problem before on the forum"

Sorry I can't be of more help than that.

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