Okay guys so it was probably a few months ago when I replaced the oil rail plug at the back of the passenger side head by the downpipe that was leaking pretty bad. Well I noticed a pretty bad oil leak walking out to my truck the other day (about a gallon every 2-3 days) and thought it was my oil cooler. Degreased the top of the engine and was going to wait on the bottom half until I had more time but next time I looked I noticed there was oil way up by the hpop ish area. Long story short I'm pretty sure it's the oil rail plug that is on the head right there (driver's side front) and it is right behind the AC compressor and the cast tower it sits on. Now I thought I'd have a chance at getting to it by removing the compressor, (side note-when taking that off it was my first time and I started to unbolt the hose connection thing on the back of it, don't do that, it shoots your refrigerant everywhere. And I need to extract a bolt because one of them was seized and broke off.) Anyway as it turns out this looks to be more of a pain to get to than I might've thought. It would appear the whole tower/casting needs to move for me to get enough room to remove and replace the plug. Does anyone have any insight on this? I couldn't find much on a Google search and I'm not 100% sure how this tower comes off or what all it's attached to..

 

Just unbolt the ac bracket but dont remove the bolts. If you just slide the assy out then you can get to the rail plug.

 

How many bolts are holding that on? I removed three last night (two up top and one on the bottom) and it still seemed to be in place pretty tight. It looked like there were a few other pulleys that are possibly attached to this as well? If I do have all the bolts out then I guess I'll just have to pry and knock it loose like I did with the AC compressor, it was frozen in place as well

 

There is one more. Its kinda hard to spot.

 

Okay I'll have to look for that last bolt when I get home this afternoon. Also do you know if I could just add some refrigerant or one of those recharge cans to make up for the little bit that blasted out when I unbolted the line connections for a couple seconds? Or will I need to have a shop recharge it or something?

 

You can probably add a little refrigerant with a can. Maybe this picture will help you.

 

That bolt is almost behind one of the pulleys. I had to feel around to find it.

 

That bolt on the far right must be the one I missed, thanks guys! I'll report back later with what I find when I get back home

 

Depending on how much came out and how long it was really off, you may be safe like Glenn said.

However you do have to be careful with running it too low if a lot came out. I'd imagine you lost compressor oil as well as refrigerant, so if you go the route of filling it back up, I'd get one of the cans that has an oil charge as well.

The AC system takes PAG 46 oil, so if the oil charges list what type try and get that! Don't use mineral oil (unless you have an r-12 system!) That's for r-12 systems only, you should have r-134a I believe!

 

All our OBS trucks should be r134a. They stopped R-12 in about 1990 or so.

Red

 

Yeah I was thinking that. I know some 92 and up Broncos had r-12 and my 91 Camaro did as well, but I don't know the exact cutoff date. I was thinking it was 94 or 96, so I didn't want to say 100% sure he had r-134a if the cutoff was 96, but it was probably earlier in the 90s.

 

94 was the 134a transition year.