Rear Oil Seal Kit - Spring

I am in the process of installing the rear oil seal kit (square version from BCS) in my BJ7 as part of the "Smitty" 5 speed project. Engine is in the car. I have done the drilling and tapping, and I test fitted the assembly. Everything looks good. Decided to fight the dreaded seal spring installation. After a lot of sweating and cursing, I got the spring ends connected. I would have expected the spring to be somewhat snug around the crankshaft. Mine is sloppy loose with absolutely no tension. I know I still need to "roll" the spring in to the seal, but I am concerned that I have no spring tension now, and do not see how placing the spring in the seal will add any tension. Any thoughts?

I faintly recall that I shortened the spring a small amount and reconnected it???

I captured the ends with straight pins, which allowed the correct orientation of pointing the spring inward toward the engine:


This worked great from 2008 until the present when I'm having my engine rebuilt.

Keoke and Steve -

Thanks for the replies. Steve, I saw your solution on an earlier post, but I did not realize that the pins were permanently installed. Seems like a good solution.
I am starting to wonder if the spring is absolutely necessary. I have installed other seals that did not have a spring. I know that the purpose of the spring is to apply some tension to the seal lip, but this spring adds very little, if any tension.

John Said:

" I am starting to wonder if the spring is absolutely necessary. "

In this case I recommend you use it.

I work with hydraulic pumps and replace this type of seal daily and the spring is definitely necessary and there should be tension on the spring when installed

The thing with the spring is millions of seals are made that way by all the manufacturers. If it wasn't necessary, they'd all like to make a little more profit for their shareholders by omitting the spring.

Well, I have decided to allow common sense to control my decision. Everyone is correct; The spring is there for a reason. Going to snip a few turns off one end to give it some tension, then perhaps use Steve's straight pin technique.

Well for what it is worth - I came up with a revolutionary idea for this one when I did mine. I made an shaped tool from an old coat hanger - flattened one end and made a slight U shape in it to take the spring, I fashioned a crude handle at the other end and working from under the car I used it to locate the spring into the seal and rotated the seal whilst feeding the spring into it - took less than a minute - that was after 2 hours fighting the problem the day before.

I have also renewed the seal when I later rebuilt the engine Much easier to install then ) and at no time did I need to alter the spring.

Just before you start snipping the spring, have you tried dry installing it into the seal off the car? you will be able to see how tight it fits at that point.






Bob

Task completed. I dry fit the spring in the seal and it was relaxed to the point that it fell out when I turned over the seal. I cut off two rounds to start, and it took two more to get the spring snug when fitted in the seal. Steve - I tried your pin method, but the pins I had were too thin and just bent without ever penetrating the seal. I even heated the pins with no luck. I used a method similar to Bob's suggestion to roll the spring in to the seal. I used two pick tools kind of like how you use tire irons to mount a tire on a wheel. Done. Thanks for all of the suggestions.