33 Coupe Adjusting and Tweaking 13        5/16/09

 

Do you smell something funny? 

The leak looked pretty bad because there was oil from front to back underneath the car. I put the car up on jack-stands and began to look for the leaky area. I should have taken a picture of the underside because I could see drips everywhere so out came some rags to mop up the mess.

After I had most of the oil cleaned up, I still didn't know exactly where it was coming from, but it had to be from one of two places, the front of the oil pan or from the timing cover seal where the harmonic balancer goes. What I needed to do now was start the car and then look for the problem.

I called on my wife to work the throttle while I was under the car and after a few minutes of it running, I had a drip or two. I used a rag and cleaned off the drips again and It looked like it was coming from the front of the oil pan. Then after another minute I really wasn't convinced that it was the pan so I shut off the motor and cleaned things really well one more time.

Round two of running the engine but this time I didn't see anything new so I crawled out from under the car and grabbed a handful of gas pedal till I saw the shift light come on a couple of times (6000 RPM) and headed back under the car. Sure enough I had some more oil and it looked like it was the oil pan again, but looking a little closer I noticed a small amount on the bottom of the timing cover this time. Gotcha!! So now I knew what the problem was, the timing cover seal was bad.

After ordering some new parts, it was time to take things apart. After removing the grill, I noticed how dirty everything was but I guess after three years of driving I was bound to have a few bugs and dirt here and there.
 

 

 

Here you can see what I was talking about. Look how dirty everything is!! At the bottom of that pocket is a bunch of small rocks and bugs. And look at those turn signals...wow. I used this teardown time to get things all clean again because I had no idea it was this bad.
 

 

 

The radiator had to be removed and I found out how hard that was to do that because I put that in before I put the fenders and grill shell on. To get it out I had to remove the alternator and loosen the hood latch system as well. All this was new to me but now I know what it takes to remove it.
 

 

 

Look what I found after the bottom pulley was off!! I believe I found the problem so now it's time to remove the harmonic balancer and get that seal out so I can replace it.
 

 

 

Here you go the smoking gun. Check out the piece that's missing from this seal. Between those arrows is about 3/4" which seems like a bunch so no wonder it leaked. Now...how am I going to remove this seal without taking off the timing cover? I have an idea.
 

 

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