Thank you so much for your detailed thoughts. I am really learning a lot and hadn't thought at all of the idea of a faulty packing job. Well, now that some time has passed, I had the same vendor who did the packing 6 months ago, return yesterday to fix the blown packing. After reading your post I didn't know if this was a good idea because he could have been the original problem, but the appointment was set and I felt like I didn't have the time or trust to go with someone else. Anyway, he gave me the texacone seal from the blown packing. It is very interesting. The green seal has over a half inch wide "groove" where it is worn away at a specific spot. He says this supports his theory that there is a problem with the piston. He originally thought the piston was ground down creating flat spots for oil to leak through the seal, and degrade the seal prematurely. Now seeing this groove it looks like there is a large nick or bump that is causing the wear. What do you think? I contacted Otis and they don't share that theory of course. They think that the piston was not aligned correctly causing it to wear the seal at that point. I cant' visualize what otis is saying because if the piston was not aligned I would think that the wear would be larger than a half inch, that the wear would be nearly one half side the the seal from the tilt or angle of the piston. Thank you for sharing your thoughts

Also if a piston has been ground done what does it look like? My piston looks like it has a pattern on it, like ripples/waves, my tech says that is what grinding looks like. When I compare that to my other piston in the elevator, the other piston doesn't have that wave/ripple pattern. Can grinding alone cause such oil leakage problems? If a piston was ground down, was Otis supposed to tell me at the time of install?

I will see if I can figure out how to post a picture of the seal....