With the clutch and flywheel still on the car, just looking at the tranny, would you guys say the rear main seal needs to be replaced? I think it might because what else would cause this ring of fluid to be on just that part of the bellhousing?

 

Oh yeah, when removing the tranny, when you take off the slave cylinder, don't put the bolts back in the tranny, or atleast all the way, they will catch on the flywheel....

 

have you confirmed what the "fluid" is? it looks like dirty or burnt oil residue. smell it?

 

It's oilly, I got it all over my hands and stuff and it took a good 5mins to get my hands semi clean Tommarrow I'm taking off the flywheel/clutch. I'm worried if it is the rear main since I doubt a parts store will have one in stock and Chris needs to leave tommarrow afternoon.

Also here's another pic

 

look at the process of elimination: what else could it be?

removal of the fly will tell you more. so we wait...

 

The rear main is more common than you think

 

rear main.. it's easy enough to replace. It's also often the rubber seal between the oil pan and the seal retainer.


be sure to buy both gaskets for the retainer though...
pull it out and replace the gasktets, then use a dab of RTV silicone when you're putting hte rubber parts back together and it'll never leak again.

 

OK, here is the rear main. Does that look like the leak? Shawn seems to think it might be the oil pan, but it's hard to tell. Any thoughts? The top of the seal is dry and looks fine, but there is oil on the bottom.

Thanks,

Chris

 

i would replace the rear main and reseal the oil pan. you already have the trans out it would be foolish to leave the old seal in.

 

Its hard to say but in order not to take a chance like Xenomax said I would change the rear main seal and re-seal the pan.

 

When my clutch was done recently they replaced the rear main seal since everything was open and they claimed it was leaking anyway so it's good to change it. It was cheap too only 25 bucks.

 

yes. that is why i replaced it when i had the tranny rebuilt last year. the seal seemed fine, but it'd been a long time. and we were already there. so why wait for it to fail.

 

Ah, anyone know how to get the old seal out? Tips/Tricks/etc? It doesn't want to come out hmmmm

 

See the 4 small screws on the retainer above the seal?

pull those out.
use a putty knife and a hammer to wedge behind the retainer and carefully pry it out. there's two alignment pins on it (just above the outer two screws), so take care not to damage it.

once you've got that out, replace the rear main seal, the paper gasket behind it, and the rubber oil pan seal on the bottom of it.
coat the rubber seal in a light coat of RTV before putting it back in and it'll never leak again.

Many times it's not the rear main seal that's leaking- it's the oil pan gasket underneath. it looks very similar to the rear main seal, but that's usually what's leaking.

 

We couldn't get the seal out, so we just swapped it with one from my spare motor, after looking at it, I thought the same thing, that the seal below it was leaking and not actually the rear main.

we ran into some trouble putting the axles back in, decided to get something to eat, then went back out and a shoves later it was home

Chris just left, I also put the 240sx steering wheel on for him, Hopefully he'll start another thread with pics. At first just by looking a pics I didn't think I'd like it, but after putting it on, I think I want one for my car, hehehehe.

Oh yeah, the guide pin thing closest to the radiator some how got smashed, so we had to run down to Home Depot and get some cutting discs for my dremel, kind of funny actually.

 

Made it home, yaaaaay!

The four hour drive just flew by.

Car really hauls a$$ now. Well, it did before, but it's even better now

I want to publicly thank MrGone for all the hard work he put in. We ran into some snags that had us both irritated, but the result was fantastic.

I owe you Shawn!

PS, I will probably get the pics on Tuesday. I have to work tomorrow late and I am beat down tired right now.

 

Dremel Time

That part was actually kind of fun, lol

Crap, I forgot about putting the VTC's on a switch for you, bahhh.

I'm just really glad my steering wheel puller is being used more than once, first thing tommarrow that GXE wheel is coming off w00t!!! Oh yeah, the XD-5 light bulbs look really cool.

Oh yeah, it was funny on our little test drive, Chris must have completely forgot that he probably should break in the clutch. At first there seemed to be some chatter just backing out of the driveway, but once we hit the main road wweeeeeeee! I dont blame him though, I did the exact same thing

 

Shoot, I thought the clutch was already broken in, since it was used.

I guess that makes sense now because it had never been used with that new flywheel. It seemed much better when I got off the freeway at Troutdale (about 3 hours later) and was fine when I pulled it into the garage.

We will get to the other stuff some other time. I also need to bypass the KS until I can replace it. After about 2-3 hours, you can definitely tell the "heat soak" is setting in. It wasn't as bad going home as coming up there, but I think the lighter flywheel made it seem like the car had more power.

My wife had the couch all set up for me, so I was in trouble. Sorry about rushing off, but I knew she was going to be mad. My son woke up and was glad to see me, so it lightened her up a bit and I got to sleep on the bed. yaaaaay.

Are you going to cut the leather off the steering wheel, or just leave it on? I would probably cut it off, but I could drive with it just fine as-is, so you shouldn't have any problems.

Good work with the dremel, too. I can't believe that little thing held us up for well over an hour.

chris