oil leak - upper oil pan

["Tony Sims" <simstony@domain.elided>]

Tim Lentz timlentz@domain.elided wrote:
>
>I've been chasing down the last of the nagging problems on my recently
restore
>'74 Spider (115). The rebuilt motor, which now has 4500 miles on it, is
>leaking oil at the back of the upper oil pan. It's not real bad, but after
an
>hour or so of driving I've got a oil oozing down the front of the
transmission
>bell housing ... and eventually dripping onto my garage floor.
>

Hey Tim,
I'm in rebuild mode now, and I had something happen last week that may or may
not be a source of your leak (although not a good one now that your engine is
in the car).  There's a U-shaped steel cover on the back of the block that
covers the oil passages above the rear main seal.  When I installed this cover
on my clean block with a new gasket, the gasket split under the bottom bolt on
one side.  I noticed it and was able to pull the cover back off and make a new
gasket.

I thought this was odd because both the block and the steel plate are very
flat and true, and I wasn't going gorilla on the bolts, they were at probably
no more than 6-8 lbs/ft.  I'm assuming it was a defective gasket.  If your car
has a leak here, it might look like it's coming from the back of the pan.

I don't know how you could check this without dropping the trans (and then of
course, we'd start that whole discussion about how that's not possible
again...).  Maybe you could do it with a flashlight and a long extension
inspection mirror with the lower front trans cover removed, but it looks like
you need eyes on stalks for a job like that.

For your sake, I hope I'm wrong!
Cheers,

Tony
Portland, OR
74 GTV

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