sealing oil leak. wrenchers only
 

02 firechicken with ls1 auto. 100k miles. bone stock. have an oil leak that appears to be under pressure. its dripping good off the back of the pan, coming out when car is idling. I got under the thing and I can find $hit. oil is splashed everyplace. I did my research and comomon pressure oil leaks on this motor appear to be rear of intake, oil pessure sender or rear main seal. In a few weeks im gonna do all three of those. can anyone think of any other gaskets I may need while Im in there. I would hate to bang out those and button everything up and miss a stupid sender or something that is impossible to change without taking off the intake, you know what I mean? thanks in advance. NEFbody rules!

:la:
peace

rear of the intake is an LT1 thing. so dont bother there. rear of the oil pan is common more so then rear seal on the LS1. bad filter gasket from a cheap filter can cause a leak as well. IF its all in the rear of the engine?

First just get under the thing and tighten all the oil pan bolts. If the intake has never been off I'd daubt it was up near the intake my guesses would be rear main which u gotta pull the trans. Or pan which sucks

can I do that without oversquishing the gasket out and making it worse?

awesome, thanks for that. makes sense now that I think about it about lt1 vs ls1. as far as cheap filter...haha. I use fram so its totally possible. My pan seems to def be leaking because its all around the pan. also, when running, it drips pretty heavy off of the lower part of the bell housing at idle, so that leads me to believe that its rear main seal or maybe oil pressure sender and dripping down. Ill have to check inside the bell housing to see if wet in there to confirm rear main, i guess?

there is an inspection plug bellow the torque converter. pull it and see if the converter is wet. if so trany is coming out for the rear main seal most likely. i still say double check around the pan real good. on the trucks they POOR out oil like crazy. havent seen a ton of f buckets do it but possible.

In addition to the pan def leaking, A few more quick things I noticed today when I got under it again. Something is dripping down from behind the intake on the pass side for sure, or the mount where you connect the oil filter to the block is spraying oil upward. What's the deal with the top part of this unit. It has a nozzle type deal with a hole in it. It bolts to the block with two bolts-and has a gasket. Is this a pressure release for the filter?

mines got a small pan seepage clearly evident when looking around. Oil does get everywhere no matter where it's coming from. I had a crappy filter gasket easy fix though. Pizza is right though pull that plug and check if the converter is soiled. If so it's clearly rear main and time to get dirty.

I dont think you can oversquish the gasket. If anything, youll strip out your oil pan bolts which would not be good. I would just make sure theyre torqued to the proper spec.

I confirmed this weekend that the rear main is def the problem. I've done countless th-350's on my back before. This one looks to be really straight froward except the two top bolts on the back of the block. How the heck do you reach those? From underneath and about 5 swivel extensions?

One swiven and 3-4 extensions lol

cross member out tilt motor back slightly giving yourself some room. take the top ones out FIRST. then push it back up to it normal position and remove the rest of the bolts.

awesome. that is good to know!.

one last question. Can this be done without removing the factory y pipe?

you should be able to push the tranny up and back enough to clear the pins then drop the front down to clear the pan, then forward and out.

Is there anything you dont know about 4th gens? lol

Yeah! How to make one go fast without breaking anything!!!!! lol

lol ^^^^^

Yup!!!!!!:c4boom:

muchas gracias muchachos. I'm gonna give it a go right soon. I will post back with stories of woah. Im prob gonna replace the cover gasket too just so I can say I did..Ill align it with the seal. I love tearing $hit apart so this is gonna be fun. while Im in there I can even get my greasy mits up top and replace the oil sender.