My Oily Crank

Click image for larger view. I’ll be shoving my face in here over the next couple weeks. There’s an oil leak somewhere in front of the engine, possibly busted seals on the crank or cam shaft. Oils been spraying over the engine bay for about a year. I’ve been using Castrol high mileage and I’m not losing too much oil anymore. But I’m gonna bust in and install new seals, gaskets, belts and covers. I may even throw in a new horn.

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5 thoughts on “My Oily Crank

  1. Alden

    Looks like the cam seal, or the valve cover gasket. For the crank seal if you change it I’d use a volvo branded one, the aftermarket ones seem to leak more often. Now is also the perfect time to do a timing belt (pretty easy to do), a square tooth belt like that costs me $14 at the dealer iirc, aftermarket most places is 10-11 so i’ll just use the volvo belt. THe cam and intermediate shaft use the same seal btw. The elring ones seem to work fine for this, and are 6-8 bucks each. If its just the cam just change that, and line the timing mark on the cam up with the mark on the cover, then just don’t move the other pulleys so you don’t need to retime everything.

    One other tip, I like a pair of oil filter pliers (ones that look something like this) for compressing the T-belt tensioner. Compress it with the belt on, then just re tighten the tensioner bolt to hold it (or if you’re really worried you can use a pin)

    Also there in the summer, I’d run delo 400 15/40 in your car. It is really high in zinc which is good and is high in detergents which will clean a lot of crap out of your engine. It is also cheap (I pay 13-14 a gallon for it here) 15/40 is probably too thick there in the winter though sadly.

  2. DoctorJay Post author

    Just ordered a bunch of new seals and belts from FCP. I couldn’t find the cam-shaft stabilizer wrench on either FCP or ipd. Not sure what I was missing but figured it would help.

  3. Alden

    Yea with a manual you can put it in 4th and have someone jam the brakes but on the auto that doesn’t work so you need the tool or have to do the rope trick.

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