Alrighty, well, that was fun! After getting all that other stuff out of the way, i finally got down to the crankshaft seal, and cleaned everything up, let it sit overnight, and came back the next morning to find a nice pool of oil sitting underneath that seal. so that was definitely it. i checked the camshaft seals also, and they were dry. they don't seem to be leaking at all. so i installed the new seal, and began the reinstallation process. i checked the timing marks all around several times to make sure they were lined up, and put the new timing belt on. i had to turn the crankshaft pulley a bit to adjust the tension on the belt, but before i went any further i brought everything back in line, timing marks lined up. well, after finally getting everything put back together, i go to start it up, and it doesn't start! it cranks over just fine, but won't start, not even a sputter. suspicious that somehow the timing was off, a friend and i took the distributor cap off to see where it was pointing. we also took the top right timing belt cover off, lined that sprocket's timing mark up, and compared with the distributor that way. in the chilton, is says the distributor should be pointing towards cylinder #1, the front left. well, mine definitely wasn't. i think what happened, was through all the extra turning of the crankshaft pulley, i must have turned it a full revolution around, and even though the timing marks on all the pulleys should have been lined up, the distributor is off. does that sound right?

in a last ditch effort to make it work, we took the distributor out, and manually turned it so it faced the number #1 cylinder while the timing belt marks were lined up. but that didn't work either. so somehow in the process of everything, i must have misaligned the marks at some point. so tonight, i'm gettin back in there, redoing the whole thing. i should know this process pretty well by the time it's all said and done!

anyway, sorry for being a bit longwinded...are there any theories out there of what happened, and how i can avoid this the second time around? thanks for your patience and help!

jeff