legacycentral bbs

Hello, quick question here. Who can tell the the name of the seals that are located at the rear of each cylinder head?

There is one on the driver's side of my EJ22 that is a round rubber seal that can be clearly seen here:



There is one on the passenger side in about the same location I assume, but it has a cover plate with two small bolt over it. Sorry bad pic:



Are these seals fairly easy to replace? I figure maybe will need to pull the valve covers to get them swapped?

The rubber plug on the driver's head does not typically need to be replaced. I've never replaced it. The one of the passenger head is an o-ring.

The o-ring is very easy to replace, two bolts to get the cap off, and then you just pull the old o-ring off and put the new one on.

Thanks, I'm swapping the engine out for one that recently had the front cam seals, timing belt, rear main seal, and valve cover gaskets. They got them all except these two! Figured while the engine was easy to get at I'd get them. The passenger side does look like it was leaking some.

I strikes me odd they used two different types of seals for each side. Only thing I can figure is that since on the turbo models, the turbo is close to the one on the pass side, it needed the plate for protection?

...see the correct answer below.

The difference is due to haw the boxer engine is laid out. The cylinders are offset slightly, as a result of that, the cams have to be different lengths and are inserted into the heads differently. That back cap on the passenger side provides thrust support for the cam. On the driver's side the thrust support is in the front.

Ah yes, was not thinking in all three dimensions, was I?

Thanks, that makes perfect sense now.