2 Piece Rear Main Seal

KENO wrote: A Felpro BS 40042 will work with either rotation, since the wick lines are in the crankshaft on the engines that use the 2 piece seal like your 1980  It's a smooth seal that "goes both ways"  Lots of other brands that will cross reference to the Felpro number too. Front seal for Reverse Rotation only is Felpro 17795

You'll find other names on Felpro oil seals too, like National for example.

Fel Pro and National are owned by the same company.  Today I think that is Apollo.  Last year it was Tenneco, for 30 years prior it was Federal Mogul.   Federal-Mogul was bought by Tenneco and Apollo bought out Tenneco.   How the world turns.   In the year 2000 Fel Pro manufactured 98% in house in Skokie IL.  Carl Icahn owned Federal Mogul at the time and decided they should only make the Key Parts in house and farm out everything else.   I still use many sets of the Fel Pro per year but it is sad to see a company broken apart like that in the name of corporate profits.   Fel Pro still manufactures Millions of parts each year in house but the small misc parts are now farmed out.  I would bet the in house number is still at least 65% and key parts like head gaskets are near 100% in house.

It has to do with production runs efficiency and annual demand.  As parts slow down in sales companies make decisions to continue making the part or to source it.  On slow selling parts it will gravitate to one company still making the part and the others just re box it.   They tool up to make a part and that has costs involved.  They may build 1,000 to 5,000 parts in a production run.  Building less is just not efficient.   5,000 may be a 4 year supply so they sell to all the other vendors.   The next step is they stop making them completely and they become un obtainable.   This is common as parts hit the end of their run.   Try and find parts for a Model A.  I think we are years away from small block Ford parts going away but at some point it happens.

KENO wrote: So Neil, it looks like you have a tough choice to make here. Since they're both readily available, would you rather buy the SKF seal at a pretty cheap price or buy the same SKF seal at 2 or 3 times the price from a "repackager" ? You're a banker, I think you'll probably make a good choice

Tell you one thing...if this canoe ends up leaking oil, I just hope I don't turn into Woody Hayes.

KENO wrote: How about a quick recap of what's happening with this new engine so far? You doing the work or is a shop doing it? Got all your other gaskets figured out or more questions to come?

I started a new thread. One thing I forgot to mention is difficulty in finding a builder once it's
been machined.