[V8] Rear main seal leaking? Uh oh.....

[Carter Johnson]

To add to the fun, my car has been leaking fluid for
some months now.  Not a lot, or enough to leave a
puddle, but after winding the thing out at the winter
driving school, it was enough to have puffs of smoke
coming out of the engine area.  After the timing belt,
we spent a lot of time cleaning the engine, which was
quite dirty, to try to find the leak.  So, over the
last oil change, the car went through three quarts of
oil - not an "ohmygod" amount by any means, but enough
to make me concerned.  So, the car went up in the air
last night again.  After much looking, cleaning,
ultraviolet dye, more looking, its clearly the back
bottom of the motor.  Looks like both the oil pan and
rear main are leaking.  Of course, the rear main drips
right onto the crossover for the exhaust.  Thank you,
Mr. Engineer.

My mechanic, who was one of the original Audi
certified V8 guys (Mattie Imports, FR MA) and has a
3.6, hasn't ever seen one apart, but found about 10
hours to pull the motor and 11 to pull the tranny and
alldata.  While we're there, it makes as much sense to
do everything else (all rear seals, pan gasket, tranny
filter and fluid, etc.) since you have to pull
everything apart to do that stuff.  So, without saying
a price, I estimated 2,000-2,500$.

Ouch.

Suddenly, the timing belt looks like a simple and
cheap job.  Suddenly, the vision of the 5 speed 4.2
was completely erased from my head.

Carter

W. Carter Johnson
University of Rhode Island
401-874-4947 office
401-789-3217 home


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/