how much time and effort to fix

 

Give some data on your car? You have to lift the motor or drop the tranny. Either way it's a lot of work. Most prefer to put the car on a lift, drop the subframe and tranny. If the rest of the car is not in good shape it may not be worth it. Only do it if you plan to keep it 2+ years.

 

well a friend of mine (mechanic) looked at it and said its not the seal, its comin off the head...they guy i got it from said it needed a seal...

 

Oil leaks are hard to trace down somethimes. I had a little plate leaking on our S70 once, cost $8 for the gaskets and took 40 minutes to fix. Wipe and run, keep doing that till you pinpoint the leak.

Make sure your PCV is serviced to avoid a RMS leak.

 

found the leak..sorta. its comin from behind the dist cap. ordered a new cap and button and valve cover gasket...other than valve cover, what could leak for it to go into dist cap?

 

There is no valve cover gasket on these heads. Its metal to metal with sealant in between. There are seals on each end of the cams, two on the front and two on the back. One of which is inside the distributor and most likely the issue. Buy the rear cam seals, replace them both, clean it up like rspi said and keep an eye on it.

 

Here are my instructions for the cam seals: Cam Seal Replacement, rear, 1998 Volvo S70 GLT - Volvo 850 Cam Seal Replacement

BTW, who sold you a Valve Cover Gasket? Call the police!!!

 

And don't forget to take that sixth spark plug back too !

 

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/par...mString=search

 

Ahh, I see...wrong name. The engine takes 5 of those, they are seals around the spark plug holes. The rest of the valve cover uses sealant. The cams are line bored so if there was a gasket in there the cams would flop around.

 

what torx size do i need to get the spark plug wire cover off

 

nvm...found it...t30