Rear main seal noise

[Louis-Alain Richard]

Hi all,

My 83 urQ is now making the infamous rear main bearing vacuum leak sound.  I remember the first time I heard it was after cleaning the engine with a citrus engine cleaner and water. This probably means it is now too dry and it is slowly destroying itself. Yes, pushing the clutch pedal helps to make it disappear sooner, but this is still very embarrassing


Questions:
1-       Is there a relationship between oil quality/grade and this noise? Rear main bearing seal is supposed to be lubricated from inside, right? I am using 20W50 Mobil 1.
2-       What can I do to eliminate it, except removing the tranny/clutch and replacing it?


Other subject

Last night I installed my snow tires and the recent tread on wheel bolt torque was fresh to my memory.  I removed the Ronal to install OEM steel A4 wheels.  So I cleaned the bolts very carefully, I used a torque wrench but some bolts were still showing a strange behavior.  The reason is wheel mounting flange thickness; steelies are only a couple of mm thick where alloys are 12-15 mm.  So, even after a good cleaning, the bolts were still difficult to wind past their usual resting depth, meaning the remaining threads are stretched or deformed, or still dirty. The solution was to wind-unwind many, many times with the impact wrench after another wire-brush cleaning.  Now I can easily wind them all just with my fingers. Maybe this might explain the 3-wheeler club ?

And I did not use any lubricant.  :-)

Louis-Alain Richard
Montreal PQ
83 urQ, 95 000 km.