Front Main Seal?

[91 SHOplus]

Hey Gang,

After a good search, I'm about 90% sure my Front Main Seal is leaking - intermittant smoking out of passenger side wheel well, usually after a "spirited" drive... Well, I have a few related questions....

1. Posts mention a strong smell. I'm assuming it's a sweet smell, almost like melted caramels?

2. Everyone wrote that the part was about $8-10. What about installation? I am not able to do my own service. Simple stuff like an oil change, moon roof buttons, etc are one thing, but this I believe is outa my leauge.

3. The pan is also very close to that, and the CPS also? I saw a 'fast' dripping, that looked like it was behind the lower most pulley? Is that the FMS, CPS, SOB? I'm thinkin maybe POS, but that's another thread!

Seriously, any help would be awesome! Thanx!

 

[projectSHO89]

Sweet smell is usually cooked coolant.

Installation is the real bite in the wallet. It takes several hours of disassembly/reassembly to get to the front main seal. Most defer it until the front end 60K service.

Run your fingers under the camshaft sensor. If the rearmost cam seal is leaking, your fingers will be covered in oil. Mine was leaking more oil from that one cam seal than almost everywhere else.

Front main seal leak and a front oil pan leak is almost impossible to distinguish between until that lower timing cover comes off.

Good luck.

Steve

 

[Mr Anonymous]

The front mail seal itself is very easy to replace, and is usually in the $7-$8 range for the part. The hard part is that you have to take the crank pulley, crank sprocket & lower timing belt cover to get to it. I'm not even sure that you can remove the lower timing belt cover without removing the middle and upper covers because of the way they are interlocked (which would also entail removing the assy belt(s), idlers, tensioners, etc.).

If you're going to pay a shop to do the work, you might as well get the front half of the 60K done while they're in there (crank sensor, timing belt, water pump), since that labor is a minimal addition to the labor to get the crank pulley, etc. off.

In fact, based on your description, I'd suspect the water pump is leaking more than the front mail seal. Burning coolant will tend to have a sweetish smell to it, whereas burning oil tends to be more putrid, like burning plastic (I would describe both smells as 'strong'). The possibility of course exists that both are leaking.

If your level of comfort ends at an oil change, then I'd definitely suggest finding a SHO-experienced mechanic to do the work for you. I'm not aware of who you might find in NJ, but I'm sure other members can give you some good suggestions.

 

[Trojan Man]

I just changed my front main seal this weekend. Took me quite a while to do it, about 5 hours, but then again I am by no means the best mechanic in the land. The leak that you described sounds like the front main seal to me. If you crawl under the car and look behind and under the harmonic balancer (lowest pulley), you should see oil kinda like spun out and down from the balancer. You should see the oil on the oil pan. My seal never dripped, but only leaked when I took the car to about 5k rpms and higher. But the smoke from the oil dripping on the right catalytic convertor was ******* me off so I decided to change it.

The labor involved in changing it isnt all that hard. You need to remove the battery, crossover intake pipe, torque strut, power steering resevoir, accessory belt tensioners, accessory pulleys, timing cover (all 3 sections), harmonic balancer, and crank gear. Then just pry out the seal and tap the new one in and reassemble. I also changed my timing belt and accessory belts since I was in there. You also may want to install a new CPS since it's right there too.

All in all it wasn't too tough, and now I have a smoke free ride

<small>[ October 07, 2002, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: HydroStream6 ]</small>

 

[91 SHOplus]

SHOooo:
...Based on your description, I'd suspect the water pump is leaking more than the front main seal. Burning coolant will tend to have a sweetish smell to it, whereas burning oil tends to be more putrid, like burning plastic (I would describe both smells as 'strong'). The possibility of course exists that both are leaking.

If your level of comfort ends at an oil change, then I'd definitely suggest finding a SHO-experienced mechanic to do the work for you. I'm not aware of who you might find in NJ, but I'm sure other members can give you some good suggestions.

Thanks to everyone for their efforts, and especially to SHOooo. After closer inspection, I saw the green trail of death up from above. The water pump is in fact the culprit. The yellow oil light went on before the first smoke-out, and it was about 1.5 quarts low. I guess it was just a coincedence.

I feel like such a tool

It was so damned obvious staring me right in the face. I guess I was so pi$$ed, and with all the smoke, that I couldn't see it then.

The comfort level at oil changes, was for descriptive purposes, but as you can tell, it's not too far from the truth! wink

Later!