legacycentral bbs

First off, I want to thank all of you who set up and participate in this forum, I have done much reading and I have found a lot of useful info. I hope this is not a repost I read for awhile before I broke down and posted.
I recently purchased a 1993 Legacy L wagon, 2.2 N/A, 117k. It came with a destroyed CV shaft and a hellacious oil leak. Got the CV shaft changed and used it a bit. What a decent car. Alot of things on these sue-bees seem intelligently designed. I put a few miles on it, but after a few quarts of oil I decided I better pull the motor and see if I could fix it (previous owner had it in a shop, said it is the rear main seal).
The shop was partially correct, the rear main seal is bad, but methinks oil is coming out of other places also. What is that thing that is next to the rear main seal, a plastic doo-hickey that is approximately 5" by 9" with 6 screws? I pulled it off and it appears to have just been sealed with silicone. The auto parts store was clueless and the dealer isn't open until Monday. Should I just re-silicone it? It does have some thick oil or grease buildup behind it, how thuroughly should I clean it?
Oil also appears to be coming out of one of the rear samshaft seals, but that appears to be just an o-ring that I should be able to find.
I do a part time rural mail carrier route, now I understand why so many of them use subbies, even though mine is LHD. The gas mileage whoops the old blazer, or any other GM 2.2 I've tried. So my motivations are more reliability and gas mileage start and stop oriented than rally racer performance.
Any other advice?
TY for your time
WC

BTW
1993 Legacy L wagon-117k and soon to be main vehicle
1994 s-10 Blazer gas hog, soon to be parked until blizzard days.

picture would help

Get the new aluminum part from the dealer to replace the old plastic part and replace the other seals you mentioned. If you wanted to get the rest while you have the engine pulled, you can replace the front main seal and the oil pan gunk, but I find those to be less common problems. Valve cover gaskets are very common, but those can be done easily at any time. Depending on how far you wanted to go, timing belt, tensioner, water pump, and head gaskets wouldn't hurt if you don't know how long they've been there, but they're probably unnecessary if everything else is fine.

^^ +1 Yeh, what he said... the plastic covers get brittle with age and leak. Check your camshaft seals, if they are wet, you may want to just get a complete gasket set. Make sure the replacement oil seals you buy are brown...the black ones are cheapos that will leak in short order

Ok good advice like I was hoping for. especially you evolutionmovement. The car did come with some service records indicating the timing belt at least has been changed. a couple of things:
1. I pulled the front timing covers off, including pulling the crankshaft pulley. It appears to not be leaking from in there, so I am going to leave the front main seal. But after pulling the pulley off by using an impact driver, I am not sure if I got it tight enough going back on just by using the same impact wrench. Is there a way to secure the pulley from turning to get for sure 120 ftlbs (like I read on other posts)?
2. What is that plastic but soon to be aluminum part called? So to remove confusion when ordering it. Also, do I have to get it at the dealer?
3. The rear main seal, should be brown not black? Or did you mean other seals, Aerotech?
Thank you again for any advice
WC

Yes, the rear main, or any other donut seal should be brown.
I *believe* the cover is called the air/oil separator cover... that cavity is where hot oil from the engine drains back into the sump, and any air should get worked out then evacuated via the PCV valve.

But I may be wrong

When I replaced my timing belt, I used a chain wrench to hold the pulleys still and cranked the bolt down with a regular socket wrench that I hooked a cheater bar up to.

On the side of the transmission there's a hole that you can shove a skinny flat head screwdriver through. I believe the hole is on the left side (at least it was on my 91 SS 5 spd's).

Once you do that it'll lock up your flywheel and prevent the engine from turning over as you tighten the crank pulley.

Thanks for the advice guys (and possibly gals?). I got the pulley for sure tight, and I ordered the new stamped metal air/oil seperator and a new rear oil seal (yes a brown one, and told the parts store to keep their cheapo black one) from the subbie dealer up in St. Cloud. This is the kind of direction I was hoping for when posting here.
I hope someday I can get more interesting advice (or maybe even give some) on a rally car or something ;p
Thanks again.
WC