[Gach]

Looking at your original installation pictures the seal definitely wasn’t compressed enough

[Sirrotica]

I've got 2 pieces of tubing that are the same size as the journal, one for large journal, and one for the small journal. Lay the seal in the groove and rap it a couple times with a hammer to seat it in the groove, trim the ends and just a light dab of RTV on the rope ends. I've never used a socket or such to "roll a rope seal" into the groove......

There are Kent Moore tools to do this same operation, but in absence of the actual tool this is the same way the factory manual tells you to install them, tap them into the groove with a round sleeve.

Link to You Tube showing at 8:30 tapping the seal in with the sleeve in a Pontiac with the Kent Moore sleeve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qXo9pW6nEo

This is the same way I've been doing them for decades, they nearly always seal following the factory procedure. Buick, Olds, and Pontiac all use the same type seal along with quite a few other brands of engines. Many industrial applications use this same type of packing to seal a rotating shaft against many fluids also. When I worked in maintenance in a few shops over the years you'll see this type of seal. That's where I first saw graphite impregnated rope is in an industrial setting.

[Gach]

You can see in the video after he’s hammered that piece of pipe compared to the one in your picture of your original installation. How much the rope is compressed. Also when I say fill in the divots you can see there’s no way outer edge of the divots can be filled in, so it still helps stop ration. The pipe or what ever he’s using is a good idea, but you can achieve same thing with a rolling pin. That looks like kid of a special tool for doing it. Because of the diameter of the rolling pin, you could also tap it with a hammer, its a good video though gives you a good Visual of how compact seal needs to be.