I just figured out what went wrong. while I was scraping the old gasket, some small pieces fell between the lay shaft shoulder and the block surface thus forcing the front end of the shoulder to bind to the carrier when tightened. I pulled the lay shaft out a little and got the pieces out with a very small needle. After this, I can now turn the shaft with two fingers w/o the sprocket. It's been so frustrating. I'm glad that it's over and I did learn something. While I'm pulling the shaft, I was scared to see the whole thing almost dropped out! I have to pull the distributor to get everything re-aligned. For somebody new and green, I wouldn’t recommend pulling the carrier to replace the seals just because there could be so many more things involved (totally unexpected). For someone who has been there, I would say it’s a better way. Erwin