This has me frustrated! I changed the felt seal today, and oil is still puddling under the car. I originally put in a seal dry - that didn't go over well. So I put in another, after rubbing oil on it with my fingers. Still leaked. So I submerged another felt seal for about a week in oil, and then put it in this afternoon. Still leaking. Anyone have any ideas on what I could possibly be doing wrong? The green Volvo bible says that there is an oil drain hole on the timing cover housing - I wonder if mine is plugged? I didn't check at the time, but I could.

Thanks in advance!

I'd check the crankcase ventilation system. Crankcase fumes (air/fuel/exhaust leaking past the rings) needs an easy path out. If that's blocked, pressure builds up and generally this means oil being pushed out past seals.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

I have a funny feeling you're right, John. I replaced the breather hose with a little air-filter-like apparatus a while ago, and it is probably plugged solid. I'll put the original hose back on and reconnect it to the oil filler cap and see what happens. Thanks!

240's do this *all the time*, because of the ridiculous little salt shaker flame arrester in the breather tube. 140's are probably a lot less prone.

But just to verify, your hose doesn't go from the block mounted breather fitting (next to the distributor) to the oil cap does it?

The configuration varied over the year, but in general one of the hoses shuold lead to a fitting on the intake manifold (where it gets a little vacuum mostly at idle) and the other should go to a fitting on the air cleaner.

It's a sort of two-way system. At idle, the mild vacuum on the intake manifold sucks a little bit of air through the system, pulling clean air in from the air cleaner. With the throttle wide open, there's more than enough blow-by to overwhelm that small fitting ont he intake manifold (and there's less vacuum to pull through it as well) so the flow reverses and it blows out into the air cleaner, where the engine sucks it in again.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

I took the hose from the block-mounted breathing apparatus off last year and put a fancy little air-filter-like assembly on. Tonight I took it right off, (leaving the breather open to the elements, the hole pointed straight up towards the hood) and sure enough, it was saturated with oil. I went for a nice long drive on the highway (even got it up to 85 mph!) and when I got home, I immediately checked for drips. There were a few drops of oil coming down from behind the pulley, but nothing like it was before. I wish there were no drops at all, but this is legions better than what it was. The underside of the hood was pretty messy with an oily film, so at least that breather isn't plugged! So... It looks as though you were correct, John. I'll reattach a hose to the breather on the side of the block, and maybe mount an oil catch can of some kind.

I left the inlet into the air cleaner housing open, and I plugged off the inlet in the intake manifold. Perhaps I should put the hose back on, the one that goes from the oil filler cap into the intake manifold. But is that system really necessary, after all is said and done?

I don't think you've said if this is a B18 or B20, although I'd guess a B20. The pipework is different on each and the flow is in the opposite direction to each other. Easy to mix the pipes up if you're not aware of the differences but to work properly they have to be correct and match the hardware on YOUR engine, assuming that hasn't been swapped about as well. That sort of breather on the "ear" should actually be filtering the air going into the block on the B20 rather than the other way round as you might expect.

it is indeed a B20, Derek. And after I installed all new hoses to their correct destinations, everything is fine in the 145 world again. Just took it out for a little 15-minute jaunt, and there is nary a drop coming out anymore.

Thanks, everyone!

OR maybe you have a ding or scrape on your crank hub.
You should be able to pull it off fairly easily from the nose of the crank.
Once you get those things taken care of you might consider going to an updated
elastomeric (neoprene, etc) seal as used on the B30, B21, etc.
I have timing covers machined to take those seals.
e-mail me offlist if interested.

The crank hub slid off pretty easily, George. And it looked like it was still in good shape. I have the updated neoprene seal/timing cover sitting on a shelf - I was going to hold off until the spring to install it. I may have to alter those plans! Thanks for the reply!