timing or vacuum?

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Jun 11, 2012 | 12:23 PM

#16

Gary Lewis

FTE Legend

Joined: Jul 2010

Posts: 32,875

Likes: 48

From: Northeast, OK

Glad to hear it is running well. But, that's a bummer about the leak. You are sure it is the rear of the pan and not the rear main seal? The pan seals with the rubber piece and if you put RTV on it and didn't wait until the RTV set up I'll be the rubber piece slipped out from under the lip of the pan. RTV is extremely slippery until it sets and can easily cause the rubber seals to squirt out.

Jun 11, 2012 | 02:17 PM

#17

Citizenrain

Thread Starter

Junior User

Joined: Mar 2012

Posts: 65

Likes: 0

From: Seattle, WA

Thanks for the feedback Gary. We definitely plan to let it dry longer this time, just to be on the safe side. We were pretty confident it was dry last time but cant ever be too careful and we really just would not rather take the engine out AGAIN to try and fix it. The rear main seal looks dry.

I think that next time I'll go with the one piece, as seen here:

Fel-Pro OS30214T - Oil Pan Gasket Set | O'Reilly Auto Parts

instead of the 3 piece cork gasket with seperate rubber end pieces we tried most recently.

Jun 11, 2012 | 02:30 PM

#18

1983F1503004x4

Fleet Mechanic

Joined: Jul 2011

Posts: 1,916

Likes: 4

Not trying to be a butt, but if you had hooked a vacuum gauge to it, you could've watched what the needle did and it would've told you if there was a leak or if the exhaust was plugged. Plus, you can set the timing and fuel mixture with a vacuum gauge and it'll run better set that way than it will with a timing light.

They're really inexpensive too. You can get them pretty inexpensive at an auto parts store like Autozone or Advance or Oreilly's. I'd go pick one up as soon as possible and learn to read it.