'91, 6-cyl, manual-shift Explorer. I just had an all-new clutch installed. Immediately, it began leaking oil. When the truck is up on the rack, you can see oil leaking from the seam where two large metal sections come together. Before the clutch repair, the truck went through approximately 1 qt every 1,000 miles. Immediately after the clutch repair, it uses about 1 qt every 1,000 miles. Does anyone know why the oil now leaks and what needs to be done by the mechanic to fix it?
Thanks,
Ahhh, could you be a little more specific?
Is it transmission or engine oil that is leaking? I'm assuming transmission.
Which big metal sections are you talking about?
And you said it was leaking 1 qt of oil per thousand miles before the repair, and then after it leaks the same thing.
If it is the transmission, and it is leaking transmission lube, 1 qt per thousand miles is a pretty severe leak. And if it is engine oil, that's flowing pretty well, too.
Sounds like you need a good repair shop to do a close inspection. But either way, a clutch removal should not have directly impacted the transmission, unless of course they dropped the transmission and it impacted a hard suface at a high velocity.....
Good luck,
Dave
I'll assume you meant it's now "using" one quart per 100 miles. Most likely it's leaking from the rear main bearing seal. To fix it, the tranny has to come back out, the clutch removed, and the rear engine seal replaced. Did the people who did your clutch also replace the rear seal when they did the clutch work? Often times people have that seal replaced when they do the clutch because most of the labor is in the tranny R&R and it adds very little extra to the cost to do them both at the same time. If they did do it when they did the clutch then they didn't do it right and now it's leaking. If they didn't do it perhaps they did something that caused it to leak but I don't know if that's really possible. Seems like you'd have to be pretty rough handling the tranny to cause the engine seal to leak. Others may know more on this.
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Oops! My mistake. Before the clutch repair it used 1 qt of engine oil in
4,000 miles. After the repair, with all new parts ($900), it's going through 1 qt in 1,000 miles. Yep, it's engine oil. I wish I knew enough about auto mechanics to put a name to the big metal sections I'm referring to, but it's right where the whole clutch housing (?) is. The mechanic said it's possible that it could be a faulty "rear main seal," or something that sounded like that. That seal, a Ford factory part, purchased directly from a Ford dealership, cost about $70.
If the "two big metal things" are the engine and transmission bell housing, and there is oil leaking, it would sound like it could be the rear main seal. That's certainly a common way for oil to escape the back of the engine.
And the seal is not the expensive part of the job - it's the labor to perform the change.
Dave
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