lil disturbed about.....

[lmills]

Finding oil dripping from what appears to be the rear main seal on my motor with 4500 miles on it. I first thought it was a fluke, but my buddy with 5500 miles is now having the same problem. What's up with this? I have never had this kind of an issue in the past. I put 95,000 trouble free miles on my last cummins. The only oil I had under that truck came from me extending the vent tube down and deleting the breather bottle. This made a slight oil trace under the truck. I could accept that, but this this is a little upsetting. :{

 

[Hohn]

If the 3rd Gen trucks have a puke bottle like the 2nd gen truck do, this is probably the source of your drip.



I though my truck was leaking from the rear main, but it turns out that it was all the puke bottle blowby getting kicked up onto the rear pan area and scaring me.



Justin

 

[rashwor]

I have a '99

with over 150,000+ miles on it and it has never leaked a drop (knock on wood). My '92 started seeping at the rear-mail at 50,000 miles. The dealer replaced the seal under warranty and it still seeped and has seeped ever since. It now has 240,000+ miles on it. To be honest, on the '92, the vaccum pump leaks more than the rear main.

 

[MMeier]

dealer doing the work

Now that is scary indeed!!!!!

 

[lmills]

I know this has left me totally shocked. The reason my buddy bought a cummins is because he realized my 2001 ram never went in the shop for anything. That's what convinced him to cross over. Now we both have rear seal issues. This is really going to give me a black eye with his perspective of dodge. He was a diehard Ford guy till he bought his new ram.

 

[nickleinonen]

has anyone ever measured what the crankcase pressure is? positve pressure will cause leakage from seals, negitive pressure will more or less prevent all leakage. i wonder if you put a draft fitting into the exhaust pipe and ran the end of the breather pipe into the exhaust, to create a low vacuum in the crankcase would do the trick. . ? [low like 2"-3" H2O / 0. 6"-1. 0" hg]

 

[lmills]

Hmm like a crankcase evacuation. I wonder what it would do as for oil consumption. I know on our drag cars it sucks oil out if we don't have the baffles placed right.

 

[Got HO?]

Check one thing.......

Remove the bellhousing lower cover & look inside the bellhousing. I also saw what looked like the start of a leak on mine. It turned out to be excess grease on the starter bendix & ring ear that had liquefied from heat & had "crept" down to the bottom of the housing. I cleaned out the inside of the bellhousing with parts cleaner & haven't seen any more residue.

 

[lmills]

Well, it's at the dealer now, hopefully they find the problem is that simple

 

[Steve M]

I saw a little wet spot on mine at the bell housing cover. I wiped it away and haven't seen it since. I thought it was sympathy for our construction super's 6. 0 Super-Leaky. I'll have to agree with the starter gear grease.

 

[CoastyAV8R]

I thought mine was leaking when it was new and it turned out that the oil fill cap's o-ring was pinched and the oil was leaving an almost undetectable film down the valve, back of the motor and off the bellhousing. Can't hurt to look I guess...

 

[lmills]

Well the truck is back. The guy at the dealership said that the oil was from blow by. Since they eliminated the blowby bottle all together, now they just have a pipe sticking down to vent. He thinks that the oil was blown out and collected around the bellhousing and then dripped . It was a considerable amount of oil when it did it to me, so I will have to check it out myself. The spot it left in my buddy's driveway was probably 2"sx6"s. He claims to have checked inside the bellhousing and that there was no trace from it coming from higher up. So I am hoping he is right, but will check for myself so I can sleep a little better.

 

[truckstom]

even if it is blow-by... . a 2x6 spot on the driveway is way too much.

Have you been adding oil??

 

[lmills]

No I haven't added any oil.

 

[sag2]

Mine had a valve cover leak when new that looked like a rear main. With the nice shiny clear on the engine it was hard to detect. It just ran down the back of the engine. Also my factory fill had dye in it, so if you have access to a black light it makes it very easy to follow to the source.

 

[lmills]

Hats off to ya sag2. I should have taken your advice and checked the valve cover. Now at 23,000 miles I have found that was exactly the problem. I noticed my clutch was not able to hold the TST box on the levels that everyone else was holding. Since it was slipping on levels as low as 3-3 I sprung for a new SBC. When the installer(ADT) dropped my transmission the rear of the motor was covered in oil as well as the clutch, flywheel and pressure plate. He took a couple minutes to look things over for me and found the leak coming from the rear of the valve cover. As it turns out the rubber seal around the valve cover was not seated properly on the back part of the valve cover.



Ironically enough I received a customer satisfaction survey form the other day. It said if I was not happy with the service I received in the past to contact the service manager before sending the survey back to D/C. I called him to let him know about the clutch and how it was oil soaked. I don't expect them to buy me a new clutch, since the stock one would have never held the TST box anyway. It just eats at me to know they just blew me off and said they checked for the leak, but there wasn't any. There is no doubt in my mind I would have shredded the clutch with the TST, but felt that they should have been told that whoever supposedly checked the truck overlooked an obvious issue. He wants me to bring my old clutch down so he and a district manager can look at it. Now they want to fix my leak.