1999 Accord 2.3l vtec 238k miles....500 feet from the house.....a loud POP under the hood...engine runs fine & no warning lights. Okay, the son drives his mom's car to the house and parks it. This is what I found Monday evening.Attachment 10380

Tuesday, I removed the the timing belt cover and immediately saw that
the oil seal for the front balancer shaft had moved out of its mounting. Attachment 10381 It was so loose I could push it back in with no resistance and pull it out again.I removed the sprocket , replaced the seal with a $10 one from NAPA and then replaced the sprocket (with belt mounted).

The belts are almost new( 6 months old) so I decided to re-use them after
wiping as much oil off as I could. I added 1.5 quarts of oil and have driven it about 50 miles w/o a problem. I suspect other dried-out seals are also ready to fail and that makes me nervous.....Should I replace the
remaining seals or not?

 

There's a forked bracket that keeps the seal from popping out. Nice pic's and commentary here:

bernardsblog.blogspot(dot)com/2008/09/honda-balance-shaft-seal-pop-out(dot)html

The other seals should be fine if they're not leaking.

 

Personally, I would have replaced the seals just because you were down there. I'm about to change the timing and balance shaft belt on my 2000 accord and I'm also changing the front crank and cam seal and the balance shaft seal just because I'm down there.

 

Thank you, Roader. Looked in my manual...sure enough there was supposed to be a retainer.

This is what I saw.

This is what happened when it popped out.

Couldn't connect with bernardsblog (try again later).

 

According to Bernardsblog Honda did not install a retainer during manufacture; consequently they left it to their service people to do it when the cars were taken to the Honda dealer. Cars serviced elsewhere might not
ever get the retainer.

 

I think the retainer was some kind of recall campaign.

 

I was at the Honda dealer today on another matter. I checked on the retainer clip before I left. partsman told me the service dept. would have installed one the first time the car had been brought in for a timing belt change.