OT: Just broke the trans am !

I've tinkered a little but by no stretch enough to be 'in the know'. A friend of mine had a TransAm with a serious leak at some point - it hosed the firewall down with oil. We found the rear main seal to be bad - a common TransAm failure. Those seals go at random, from what I've heard.

Remco

Btw, this just occurred to me: do you think it was using straight water as coolant? If so, that's usually not good news...

i'd go along with remco--- sounds like the rear main seal. about the only thing there that makes the oil dump like you described.

what year ?? my wife picked up a 1980 ta with t-tops off a coworker. only

"Today I started it and the oil light stayed on.

I swithtched off . Must have ran for about 10 seconds or so before I realised somthing was wrong. In that time it had dumped all the oil on the driveway !! "

Sounds like a blown oil filter to me. Had this happen on a bug with full-flow filtration on a cold morning a few years back. Fram PH8A filter, had the rubber block gasket instead of an o-ring. Blew it out at 80psi.

Chris

I've never seen a rear main dump oil that fast. A ruptured filter would, though. Also the o-ring under the filter adapter could cause a gusher. Another place to look would be the oil galley plugs.

Dave

Good news (I hope )

Just got the oil filter off. And it has split where the can part is pressed into the flat part that mates to the engine.

Cant get a new one today, will keep you posted

That is good news. My second thought/post (besides main seal) was that perhaps the PO used straight water as coolant - that could cause the block or head to crack. Once you get it running again, you may want to check for that because some people do stupid things. I'd do it just to sleep better.

Remco

What brand of filter?

Dave

Put a new oil filter on today and went for a drive. All seems ok :-)

Rich