JR's Korner of BillyBob's Garage

TRUCK LINKS including vendor sites for old parts, custom parts, and tools as well as sites for classic car and truck organizations

BOOKSTORE operating in association with Amazon.com Books

PLANNING for the restoration including project schedule and cost estimates.

PRE-RESTORATION includes log entries of minor repairs and and adventures between time of purchase and time of disassembly for restoration.

JR'S KORNER JR's Korner is the history of BillyBob before I got him authored by my brother, Wm. C. Kephart.

5. Fixing the rear seal

For the technically challenged, wait - scratch that, for the numb-nuts out there who do not know which end of a screwdriver to use, the 235 cu. in. six cylinder engine uses a "rope" rear seal. The term rope seal is very descriptive. The seal looks like a piece of hemp rope. My apologies to any past or present members of US Navy or any other sea service for wrongly referring to hemp as rope. Anyone who has flushed salt water down a shitter knows that hemp is line, not rope. Rope is made of steel. Most sand crabs (people who have not gone to sea) know it as rope, so I'll use rope.

Anyway, in order to replace the rear seal one must remove the transmission, bell housing, clutch, oil pan, the connecting rod end caps and the crankshaft bearing caps in order to drop the crankshaft enough to install the top half of the seal. Because this is a lot of work several companies, which advertise on TV after midnight during the Christmas season, offer a tool designed to pull the rope seal over the top of the crankshaft without lowering it. With this tool you need to only remove the oil pan and the rear bearing cap to change the seal. I ordered one.

Seems good in theory. The only problem is it doesn't work! What was left of the old seal had bonded itself to the engine block and now, it was impossible to remove it without removing the crankshaft! Of course, I didn't find this out until I was laying on my back in a pool of oil underneath the truck with my trusty new tool.

After several hours, several Iron City's (Pittsburgh beer), several bruises, cuts and scraps, I opted for filling the void above the crankshaft with high temperature RTV and half the rope seal in the bottom bearing cap. After all, the engine was in need of a major overhaul and it was only a matter of time before I'd do this job right. Besides, my stash of used oil was growing at an alarming rate now that word was out that my house was, in fact, an oil recycling center.

The RTV and rope seal worked well, however, and oil loss dropped to about a quart every three hundred miles. Acceptable.

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You can email JR at  jr@laroke.com

Issued Wednesday February 18, 1998

Updated Wednesday June 24, 1998

copyright © 1998 William Craig Kephart all rights reserved