Carl is both right an wrong. The cotter is just as Carl describes,
there to keep the hole open. The rear seal is not a rope seal, in fact
it is not a seal at all and if the rear main bearing and oil thrower is
not assembled correctly along with the various gaskets and the sump, a
lot of oil can leak from the rear main. There are numerous approaches
that attempt to stop all leakage from that area, all of which are
somewhat effective some of the time. I have not had a problem with the
original arrangement on on our TD and I attribute that to the fact that
I have paid close attention to the details of reassembly of the rear
main bearing cap and oil thrower. Others have not been so successful
and have resorted to other methods (Moss seal and the Bradley seal),
with as I stated before, somewhat varied degrees of success. Besides
incorrectly assembling the rear main, an excessively worn rear main
bearing will cause a lot of oil leakage as will worn rings that result
in a lot of blow by.
Nels, I will send you information that I have on the rear main leakage
and what can be done about it. As Carl suggests, this is not something
that you want to delve into until you have to pull the engine for some
other reason. As Carl also suggests, thinking of it as an automatic
rust prevention system rather than an oil leak will make it easier to
ignore until you have to pull the engine for something else (just get
one of the large drip pans and line it with some of the drip carpet that
is available on the market. The drip carper is dark in color, so you
are not bothered with a widening stain confronting you each time you
drive into the garage. Unfortunately, our tolerance for oil leaks has
greatly decreased because we have become accustomed to modern cars that
rarely leak oil. The TD, in its day was considered to be a very dry
cars in spite of all the leaks and drips that are bothersome to us -
it's all a matter of perspective.
Cheers,
Dave
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive/mg-t
|