Here we go again. Reposting.

If anyone is interested in what happened with "Take 1", go to my original post. (Hint: there might be a bug in the forum posting software)

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Since rebuilding the motor last April, we have had an ongoing issue with oil loss. It has under 5,000 miles since the rebuild.

My son has the D2 at college, and I finally got a chance to inspect it last weekend.

The front and the top of the engine are both bone dry, but there is a lot of oil from about the oil pan drain plug on back.

I opened the inspection hole on the bottom of the bell housing and feeling around in there with my finger, there appears to be a lot of oil in there as well.

My thoughts are:

1: I have pressure buildup in the block;

2. I have a leaking rear mainshaft seal;

3. I have a leaking oil pan seal;

4. I have leaking crucifix seals;

Taking each in turn, I think the oil separators are clear (someday I would like to understand how these are different from a PCV valve) because as part of the rebuild, I solvent cleaned the inside of the valve covers with Berryman "dip" solvent and it flowed freely thru the the separators (I am pretty OCD and actually polished the valve covers to a mirror shine).


In inspecting thru the bell housing inspection hole, I don't see or feel any splattering of oil around the bell housing or on the rear of the engine, torque plate or flywheel, which I would expect if the RMS were leaking and flinging oil all over the housing. It is really just pooled at the bottom of the bell housing.

I guess it could be the oil pan seal, but we used a genuine gasket (not OEM), were very careful installing it and used the exact hylomar sealant called for in the RAV manual (like $25 a tube and the same stuff used in Rolls Royce jet engines).

Which leads me to the crucifix seals. The reason I think I might have screwed them up when we installed them is that after getting the rear crankshaft cap back on with the crucifix seals installed, a little bit of the seal was still sticking up above the block-to-oil pan mating surface, so I just took a razor scrapper to it and cut the crucifix seal flush with the mating surface.

In retrospect, I am now wondering whether that little nub of the crucifix sticking out was supposed to be there and was intended to provide final "compression" of the crucifix seal when the oil pan was mated to the block and torqued down.

Can anyone tell me if the crucifix are supposed to stick a little above the mating surface when installed and whether I made a mistake by shaving it to be flush with the mating surface.

If yes, then I believe I can access the rear crank/RMS cap by just dropping the oil pan, remove the cap (and bearing, noting which way it was in), put in new crucifix seals and a new oil pan gasket. Is this right?

And I know that there are a lot of opinions about whether or not to reuse the main bearing once it is removed, but no mention of buying a new one and just replacing the bottom half of it without dropping the whole crank (which as I recall weighs more than the bare block itself). Can anyone weigh in on this third way?

 

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