Re: rear main seal

Posted by Ross On 2015/4/11 6:48:59

Sadly, that does look like the seal although I am at a loss as to how it got there. Pulling the pan and the rear main cap will tell the tale.

When was it installed? I laboriously installed a seal in a 55 Carry beans about 20 years ago that mysteriously turned to mush in a couple of days. Laboriously installed another and it was fine. I surmise it was too tight, overheated, and consequently broke down.

It is of course a pain to change the upper half in the car even with a "Sneakey Pete". A helpful trick is to form the new upper half ahead of time in the main bearing cap: install the seal per normal procedure in the cap, install the cap, torque it, and even turn the engine some to burnish it in. Let it stand some time to "set". Then carefully remove your beautifully formed new seal from the cap and with the crankshaft lowered as far as you can install it in the block.

OH! Nearly forgot--one time I got a set of bearings for a 356 where the chamfer at the edge where the two halves meet was cut improperly. This enabled high pressure oil in the bearing groove to shoot out the rear of the bearing directly toward the seal. No rope seal can handle that even when properly installed, and over time that volume of oil might have washed out the seal.