I believe what makes seals go is that as they get old they get hard and
don't move much. As your enging gets old the bearings get looser so the
crank moves around more. The old seal can't compensate and it starts to
leak.
If you are getting a lot of oil, you may want to check over your crankcase
ventilation system or do a wet/dry compression check. Lots of oil often
means positive crankcase pressure. Look at the bottom of your oil cap or
at where the ventilation hosed come out of the engine. If you sea a brown
foamy scum, your engine has blowby. You can sometimes catch blowby by
smelling the fumes from the oil fill port while the motor is running. If
there is a lot of air coming out of there and it stinks to high heaven, you
have blowby.
I had one car (at least) where you had to run it with the oil cap remove or
it blew all of its oil out the seals. It ran fine and it wan't worth a
rebuild so I just lived with it.
Regards,
Bill Eastman
61 MGA
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