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Thought I was done with the engine, apparently not.

So. I replaced the rear main seal when the engine was out; but I cannot seem to get the new one installed without tearing at least a little piece off of it (like I did the last one) I figured if I used high-temp red RTV and really packed it on there, job would be done; no leaks.

Guess not. I noticed a little oil on the jack plate when the car was at the muffler shop, I thought maybe I didn't tighten my power steering lines enough. I got home, left a piece of big cardboard under the car/engine overnight and came back in the morning to find a pretty big spot of oil; about the size of a dollar bill folded in half lengthwise.


From the smell of it; it did not have a typical oil smell; so I passed it off at just... long story short

Fired the car up to clean the garage, pulled the car out of the garage (wasn't warmed up yet, had been idling maybe 30 seconds but I didn't touch the throttle at all). parked it on my driveway that slopes down hill towards the garage (nose is lower than tail) cut it off just about immediately.

30 minutes later, there's a spot of oil on the ground the size of a dollar bill. I freaked, pissed. smelled the oil, smells like oil. smelled the power steering fluid (ATF) doesn't smell anything like ATF, knew it was oil. looked at the crossmember and I could see where it was coming down, rear of the engine.

couldn't possibly be my fucking rear main seal again! seems like a never ending saga.


I run 5W30 dyno oil, the spot was bigger with the nose of the car pointing downwards which doesn't make much sense - oil would be flowing away from the rear of the oil pan and from the rear of the main seal; it's not as if either of these are under much pressure.

Do you figure it could be the front seal on the transmission maybe? Any thoughts are appreciated. The baffle plate and all that mess were fine when I pulled the engine out, no visible oil spots at all.

edit: no, can't be. gear oil smells nothing like engine oil (at least in my car). Meh, tired of chasing down this goddamn problem. Guess I didn't spend enough time on it when I did the oil seal last time.

Does anyone have a better idea about the oil seal? the best I could come up with was to spray it in lithium grease and hammer it in slowly with a wooden dowel, just like I did the previous time (and still tore the freaking seal)

I can't push it in by hand, it's too hard, doesn't seem to fit.

Are you lubricating the seals with anything? Like the 5w-30 motor oil or maybe silicone lube? I always wondered if this would be neccesary I guess this is a good time to ask before doing the front seals.

sorry to hear your leaky story, but I as well as others here have shared your frustration. Do a search for this topic and see just how bad it is, I won my battle against that seal by going to the hardware store and buying a pvc cap the same size as the seal, just taped it in so it would stay and then hosed it down with wd40 then tapped it the rest of the way in..JUST FLUSH WITH THE BLOCK!
The end

I dont understand how you can rip the seal. Is the crank scored?

My guess would be the RTV solidified and tore the seal when you started the car, why did you use RTV? the only thing you should do is pack the backside of the seal with a heavy grease like bearing grease to ensure that the spring dosent pop out when installing the seal and lightly grease the part of the seal that the crank rides on.

subytech wrote:My guess would be the RTV solidified and tore the seal when you started the car, why did you use RTV? the only thing you should do is pack the backside of the seal with a heavy grease like bearing grease to ensure that the spring dosent pop out when installing the seal and lightly grease the part of the seal that the crank rides on.

I was careful to make sure the spring didn't pop out while installing.

The part of the seal that was torn was the outer edge that meets the block.

I used RTV because the last thread I read on this recommended sealing the outside with RTV, I had a tear, I could see the tear, I used RTV to seal the tear; I let it dry and dry it did, just fine - it was about 48 hours from the time I sealed it to the time the engine cranked.

The layer of RTV I put on wasn't very deep, the seal itself isn't meant to turn you know this, I didn't put any RTV on anything but the outside face of the seal with it installed.


I greased the entire seal in white lithium grease, including where it's installed at and the crank so that it would be a smooth process.


No, the crank is not scored, but the outside face where the seal is installed (facing the flywheel, not the crank) is, it seems the engine was originally apart of an automatic transmission car and the torque converter or something rubbed up against this face and caused metal to sort of flatten out around the seal - not enough that I couldn't take a grinder and carefully grind the edges smooth, but I guess I didn't make it smooth enough before I installed the new seal and a piece of rubber caught and tore off that i didn't notice before the job was done.


Now that we're done with "you don't know what you're doing", It's interesting to note: the oil leak on the ground is LARGER when the car is not sitting level, and the leak is still coming from the back of the engine area: IE when parking the car nose-pointed-down, my spot on the ground is about the size of a dollar bill. but when parking the car in my garage, the spot on the cardboard is that of a few drops, maybe a little more.