[V8] oil leaks and such

[Dave Saad]

First off, the good news.  My poor old V8 has not been on a good road  
trip in years - instead suffering the humiliation of sitting in the  
garage while I drive my old clunker Ranger. Well - we took it down to  
Jackpot and boy was it fun to finally drive it how it wants to be  
driven.  More than a few times the girls in the back seat would say  
"hey - you are doing 100 MPH".  Yup. I sure was.  Not a drop of  
burned or leaked oil either.  I got 22 MPG average which I thought  
was OK considering I was running 87 octane fuel and had four people  
in there.  I swear it is sitting in the garage smiling now.

And a boring note on the ranger - it failed emissions (high speed CO)  
so I gave it a tune up.  It still had the OEM (1983) plug wires, cap  
and rotor.  One plug wire was clear off the cap and a 3/4 inch spark  
was passing from the corroded green cap post through the rotten boot  
to fire the old worn out plug so well that I did not really notice a  
misfire.  In fact, the motor somehow passed low speed tests. The coil  
wire was also badly corroded.
Total cost in parts for complete ignition parts and carb kit was  
$178.  I put the new parts in, tuned it by ear, and it flew through  
emission testing today. Runs a whole lot better too!

On the persistent oil leaks,  someone here pointed out that seals can  
have different lip offsets. Make sure this is not a problem.  I know  
I had a really hard time getting the rear main seal installed without  
knocking off the lip seal spring.  I suppose that could happen on  
smaller seals too.  The dye trick should pinpoint the problem for you  
too. It worked great for me on my last coolant leak.

Dave