A friend bought a 240 with a "bad oil leak in the front of the engine". He found oil under the timing belt cover but not near the cam. He pulled the cam seal (hard & brittle), replaced it. The oil leak continued.

This week I pulled the front covers, belt, crank pulley ... and saw through the holes in the intermediate-shaft (IM) gear that the shaft seal was completely out ie. loose and floating on the shaft.

The removed IM seal is orange (Elring?). Soft and pliable, looks new inside. I tried it in the IM boss and it's loose - I pulled it back out with almost 0 effort.

I took 3 new seals from stock. They are different brands, colors, and thicknesses (from thin to thick): orange, grey, black. The new orange is also smaller in OD than the other two; but the new orange is slightly larger in OD than the orange one removed from the IM.

I haven't been able to read numbers on them but I'll try again.

I infer so far: the previous-owner ID'd an oil leak at the IM and replaced the seal. The seal he/she bought is either 1) the wrong part #; or 2) undersize via manufacturing variance; and, yeah 3) it could have been mis-installed as well.

The Elring boxes say "Germany" but who knows where the contents were made.

The flame trap is clean.

Ya, I know how bad the Elring seals are based on comments here. I'm more interested in the visible size difference between two manufactured parts.

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240 drivers / parts cars - JH, Ohio