Rear Main seal - Advice

darkangylgem77 · rice boy Joined: 22 Jul 2003 Posts: 20

I posted ages ago about replacing the rear seal. Well since the person who usually does the work to my car is currently busy I have to take it into a workshop but i need to find out some stuff first.

I said before its ripping through its rear main seals (the seals last like 2-3 months), but only in one spot on the seal, the spring inside in fact, and after talking to a few different mechanics i keep getting different stories of why it could be doing this. One says there could be a mark on the crank, another says the crank might be moving up and down or some shit. I dont know much about the internal workings exactly as I am still learning but I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on the matter.

Thanks in advance for anything you can throw at me to think about.

-Gena

Ben Wight · backyard mechanic Joined: 04 Oct 2001 Posts: 946

It could be cause by a couple of things, like:

1. you have worn main bearings, causing the crank to move a lot like you mentioned, this might some how damage the seal if the movement was bad enough, probably a harmonic vibration at a certain engine speed.

2. you have a nick in the crank, like a jagged edged crater, that damages the seal when it hits.

3. the crank has a groove worn in it from the seals, and this groove is damaging the seal as the crank moves around

if it has happenned more than a few times, I would swap engines.

Ben

overit · tinkerer Joined: 30 May 2003 Posts: 317

what if the cranks got a groove get a speedy sleeve and sleeve it
swap engines for an oil leak

Josh · backyard mechanic Joined: 04 Oct 2001 Posts: 602

there are plenty of gemini engine around. U can pick them up for near nothing and that saves fucking around with the one with the rear main leak.

Ben Wight · backyard mechanic Joined: 04 Oct 2001 Posts: 946

It sounds like the rear main seal has been replaced several times already, by mechanics I assume. If a groove was visible, then it would have been speedi sleeved the first time. I wouldn't be pulling a gearbox out every other month to change a rear main seal, when you could get another running engine for $100, or rebuild one for a few hundred $.

this person would probably pay at least $200 each time, makes another engine look cheap.

Ben