98 ford ranger 4x4, 3.0 motor

We have a 98 ford ranger 4x4 pickup. It has the 3.0 engine. At about 120,000 miles the motor spun a main, as we expected it would as the 3.0 is a throw away motor anyway. They cannot be rebuilt be regular joe at home mechanics. You have little choice but to get a remaned motor and start over. That is what we did. We got a remanned motor from a very reputable motor building company and figured that would be the end of it. Boy were we wrong. The motor we put in the first time ( 1st of 4 times) from the first startup leaked about 2 quarts of oil in about 10 seconds. We shut it down and started looking for obvious leaks. Finding nothing to explain the leak, we called the builder. He suggested that maybe the rear main seal was defective, so we pulled it out and replaced seal. Put it back in, started it up and wham.....a puddle of oil in a few seconds again. We called the builder back.....this time he suggested checking a small plug that is in the top rear of motor, to see if it was leaking under pressure, should be able to see oil residue around it. So we pulled it back out and checked this plug, was tight, no signs of leaks. but we tighten it up alittle bit just to be safe. We put it back in, Cranked it up...no leak. We thought alright we found it......again we were wrong. Drove it all of 25 miles......massive oil leak. Pulled it home. Called builder. This time he admits he has no idea. We checked everthing that could possibly leak....found nothing. The oil always comes out between the engine block and the flywheel. The only thing the builder did admit was that the 3.0 is notourious for the block cracking on the back of the block and that under pressure that crack might open enough to leak and when cold wouldn't show itself. So the builder sent us another motor. we pulled the old on again, installed new motor, cranked up great. We thought finally we have it done. But once again we were wrong. The new motor did great for about 30 miles.....then....you guessed it.....oil leak. Now we refuse to believe that we could have gotten 2 bad motors from the same engine company, and the mechanic that has been helping us with this has over 40 years experience, so we know he knows what he's talking about. The engine builder has suggested this time that maybe we are missing something when installing this engine. We don't think we are. If anyone has a suggestion or has had similar experince we would love to hear from you. This has been a total nightmare for us and we would love to find out what the deal is with these motors, so any help or suggestion is welcome. Thank you in advance for any and all suggestions and will let you know if we find a solution so someone else may not have to endure this.

Thank You,

Tammie (Fla)

Reply to
rebelheartgal
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On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 20:20:28 -0700, rebelheartgal rearranged some electrons to form:

but you only described two motors. What happened to the other two?

Where is the oil leak coming from? Two quarts in a few seconds... you should be able to see it spurting out.

Reply to
David M

I think they had the first replacement motor in/out 4 times. At least, that's how I read it.

Reply to
gw

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