Anyone have J-35621 rear main seal installation tool?

Before I pick one up, figured I'd ask if anyone here has one I could rent.

And no I'm not going to install it with a piece of 4" PVC pipe. I learned my lesson about doing that sort of thing already.

Is your rear main seal leaking ? It's pretty rare on the LT1.

jasonlachapelle wrote:

Is your rear main seal leaking ?  It's pretty rare on the LT1.

Yes, I'm getting motor oil dripping out of the bellhousing

lamune wrote:

jasonlachapelle wrote:

Is your rear main seal leaking ?  It's pretty rare on the LT1.

Yes, I'm getting motor oil dripping out of the bellhousing

use a $2.00 mirror and see if the intake is leaking first,.make sure the bolts are tight,.

does your engine have an oil cooler,.?

doesn't mean its a rear seal,.you'll know better when the trans is out,.

I think that you will have some more," unique to your situation only" problems if you try and change the seal without dropping the pan,.

tell us about your experience with a 4" pvc pipe,.

Somebody send that guy a four leaf clover,rabbits foot or something. Geez,what luck!

phantom 309 wrote:

use a $2.00 mirror and see if the intake is leaking first,.make sure the bolts are tight,.

does your engine have an oil cooler,.?

doesn't mean its a rear seal,.you'll know better when the trans is out,.

I think that you will have some more," unique to your situation only" problems if you try and change the seal without dropping the pan,.

tell us about your experience with a 4" pvc pipe,.

Nick, I redid the intake. It's dry back there.

Yes it has the oil cooler. I redid those gaskets as well, that's not leaking either. That one required a helicoil to properly fix the cooler lines. Been quiet since then.

I see a film of oil slung around the inside of the inspection cover and housing.

The pan gasket is also redone. When I pull the trans it'll be easy to evaluate the seal hence the request for the proper tool.

Every time on this car where I've used a socket/pipe/block of wood to put a seal in, I've had to do it again. When I got the proper J-tool, no such problem. (Well, except for the instances where I've had grooves worn into the rotating part, which has been par for the course on this car. They really must have been bad about oil changes.)

Andebe wrote:

Somebody send that guy a four leaf clover,rabbits foot or something. Geez,what luck!

I'll take it!

a rear seal is easy with trans out,. drop the pan 1/2" remove the rear seal retainer, change seal,.

I would make sure its not old trans oil getting slung around the bellhousing,.

seals don't leak/fail without a good reason,. and as was stated lt1/gen1, 1 piece rear seals, have an exceptionally low fail rate,.
The thrust/rear main usually has to be worn pretty bad to make the seal leak, as the crank walks back and forth,.
The other cause is excessive heat at sometime,..

Nick, it seems even easier with that particular tool.

I'll know better once I get the trans off what's really going on. But I've got a seal set inbound just in case.

Pretty sure it's not trans fluid, it's nice and clean motor oil. I just changed it before the transmission-destroying trip.

It looks to me like the main cause of oil seal failure in this particular motor is grooves worn into the rotating parts. If the front crank seal had a groove worn in it, it seems logical that the rear one could as well.

Won't the rear of the motor drop down when I pull the crossmember and then the trans? The only thing holding it in at that point is the motor mounts. Will that make loosening the pan hard? If a half inch is all I need to pull the seal carrier out, should be ok, right?