It is a pleasure to see this sensible discussion and not a panic remedy to
take up arms.
As all, I also have a small leak there that has existed since I first
purchased the car 20 plus years ago. Initially I panicked and being the
"great
mechanic" that I am I wanted to stop this leak.
But as the pleasure of driving this fun machine became the driving force, I
realized that adding a quart of oil to supplement the leak and any oil that
was burned, was a cheap and quick fix for a problem that really was not that
disturbing.
I also recommend getting a car diaper. These are cheap, keep the garage
floor clean of all oil drips and you can still use a pan for the bigger ones
under the engine.
"Obviously owning a TD I've come to accept a certain amount of spotting but
if something is becoming a problem I'd like to catch it before something
really bad happens." -------------------- Nels, the only bad thing that
can
happen is if you run out of oil - but if you check oil level every time this
will not happen, since the lose is very minute each time. If you get oil on
the clutch ------------- so what, you will just have to clean it or replace
it. It is not like running out of engine oil ---- which is bad.
Keep the engine oil where it needs to be and KEEP these machine on the road!!
Safety FAST
Michael Balahutrak
53 TD
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**************************************
In a message dated 7/27/2007 6:33:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
ddubois@sinclair.net writes:
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
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