Major Oil Leak In a 318 chrsyler

Well, OK, yeah, I have to eat my own words here. I actually pulled the 318 out of my '69 Barracuda myself with a car engine lift, so, yeah, it can be done. But I had the same issues. The trailer wheel had to come off and I had to chain the engine as short as possible. It was a real thread-the-needle sort of thing because I had minimal clearance to pull it off. And a concrete floor is essential. Something big and overhead would be easier.

Assuming you can get over that hurdle and have to tools, I vote for the DIY approach. If you can't do the whole job, you could still save yourself a lot of expense if you would just pull the engine and take it to somebody else to do the seal.

tleed wrote: Typical car engine lifts usually can't pull it off because they don't have the reach. Thomas

I have a typical engine hoist and used it to pull the 351 out of the SN and the 318 out of the Barracuda. I had to remove the trailer tire to
get enough lift to get them over the gunnel but was able to get both in and out ok. You can rent the hoist from most rental store.

well FFM is about 3 and a half hours from me, boat is already in cincy. but ill will give them a call in the morning since i now know for sure what the problem is and what work it entails. maybe they will have a better price estimate and be able to get it done before august since the antique shop is going to kill my whole season basically.

Would he not be better to call FFM and see what they say??? As soon as you add antique to boat the prices are sure to go up. It would be a little bit of a ride.

John,
Tell us how any why you built this "most trustworthy and straight forward" opinion about the Antique Boat Connection. The only people I know going to them have EXTREMELY deep pockets!

Damn you, Gary.

Ha, dont tempt me Gary!

I dont want to speak out of turn on the Chryslers... I dont know jack about them. I sent you a PM regarding the custom seals- hopefully its helpful.

quik225 wrote: Left or right hand rotation is of no concern, either seal will work in both directions.

On a Ford, the rubber seals have the directional wick lines in them. If this is also true for the Chryslers, then I fail to see how using the proper rotation neoprene seal would NOT be a major concern.

If all else fails, you can have a run of custom seals made. I know Reid had a bunch done for one-piece RH 302's.

Get your neoprene seal at your local Advance store. They're pretty common. Worst comes to worst you might have to get it overnight. There's nothing special about it. The problem with SkiDim is they don't carry any Chrysler marine stuff. None. Just went through that conversation with someone there within the month.

Incidentally, I didn't fully explain above. The issue with the rope seal is it's made for a reverse rotation set-up. If your engine were normal rotation, the neoprene "upgrade" would be a no-brainer. It's the fact that the hash marks go backwards for a neoprene seal that makes it "risky". See my post above to evaluate what "risky" means here.

Sure, Hurrikain will have the neoprene seal, but so will your local auto parts store. It's not a "marine" part. And, there is no such thing as a reverse rotation neoprene seal for the 318, unless someone has invented one within the last 2 years. I looked pretty hard. Somebody PLEASE tell me I'm wrong about that.

I have been running a rope seal in my Ford for many years.I had a crank with the left hand wick lines in it from a po's rebuild,they had the correct RR cam so I don't know what happened,but it did leak. My engine shop installed a speedi sleeve to elimate the wick line problem and I used a rope seal. Not sure about Chryslers but Ford rope seals now days are almost impossible to find

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm pretty sure this one is headed to a rear main seal replacement. Good news: part is cheap! Bad news: lotsa labor.

Your 318 has an older-style rear rope seal, and it just sounds like it's worn out. There's no reason for it to dump oil that fast. And that's really fast. I've rebuilt my block twice and I've had a slow leak, but never one that fast.

Here's another consideration: When you install the new seal, you're supposed to cut the ends of the rope just enough that you form a tight seal when you put the two halves of the seal holder together and torque it down. cutting that seal just right is a "lost art" because those seals went out of use in the late '60's. I cut and installed mine twice. I got it right the first time and got it wrong the second, and that's when I got a slow leak. So the third time I installed a newer-style neoprene seal. Now here's the funky part. Your crankshaft has hash marks designed to push the oil back away from the rope seal surface. The neoprene seal doesn't need those hash marks. And, theoretically, the hash marks should slowly destroy the neoprene seal surface. I'm experimenting. One time I had a leak immediately upon rebuild. I figured if the neoprene seal held out for a while, I would be ahead. I'm now on my second season of running the engine this way, and I still can't detect that the oil level goes down between changes. For the amount of time I run this boat, I'm pretty happy with the results. BTW, I made this choice after lots of research, reading, and talking with way more experienced mechanics than I am. I got plenty of conflicting advice and just decided to roll the dice. So far so good.

Oh, and my original boat was a '69 Barracuda. I'm now running the same engine in a '74 Southwind. Love those old boats. Quote from last weekend at the ramp: "What kind of engine do you have in that boat?"

Oh, and you might want to be more careful about spelling "Chrysler" in your post headlines. That'll keep it from showing up in future searches, and there aren't an excessive number of us out here.

Thanks for all the response. I'm headed off to work now. I'm going to check it when i get home to see if the old oil filter seal did not come off yet im almost positive it did. Also i know i put a good film of oil around the new one before i put it on.

By the way i at least did something right, i didn't use a fram.

It sounds like the oil leak came up after adding the Restore. That may be the problem since many of these products have solvents and soaps in them that cause seals to swell. A good example and Eric has mentioned it several times is when he sees a trans come in for a rebuild , he can tell from the seal condition an additive has been used.

Getting an idea of where the oil is leaking, would be a big help.

Thanks for the response and the compliment. I know that the oil filter is on snug and not leaking the drain plug is also snug. There is also no oil running down the side of the block. The oil pressure gauge seems to be normal when the engine is running.

Ive never hear anything bad about Restore, maybe you know something i dont. Ill gladly take the heat. Live and learn. Right?