smithoman

I've got an oil leak on the front or my 3.0 in my new (to me) 4runner. I'm thinking it's the oil seal on the crank shaft behind the harmonic balancer. If so, how hard is this to replace? Once I get the harmonic balancer off, what do I need to do from there?

Been building this 4 runner for a month and am almost ready to journey east to Ward, Colorado from Danville, California. This will be the final repair for the journey!

Tubbyfatty

It could be the cam seals or the valve cover......or oil pan.....

scope103

As TubbyFatty implies, you have to be careful diagnosing an oil leak. Gravity is not your friend; it could be leaking from anywhere and make its way to the "front" before dripping to the pavement.

You need to get the engine so clean you could eat off of it; use some sort of spray-on degreaser and keep your garden hose away from the distributor. Only when the ONLY oil you can see is right on the leak, can you say you found it.

If it is the front seal you'll want to replace the timing belt on the way. There are a lot of write-ups on this list; most are pretty good. You'll also need a holding "wrench" to remove the crankshaft bolt; there are lots of writeup for some very clever tools -- your choice.

aa1911

iTrader: (1)

mine is covered in oil too, almost like someone brushed it on... kinda like some of the german cars, the engineers actually designed a small oil leak to keep the metal parts coated/protected. I've searched on and off for a while for the source of mine now but I have to agree that it is an undertaking; gotta clean it to find it! probably the reason I haven't done it yet, lots of time...

how much is it leaking? a lot, a little?

1990yota-pickup

if you look on the back side of the harmonic balancer you will see a oil slinger that is to start sling oil all over the engine once you seal go's bad.. (and also to devirt any kind of debri from front oil seal.

1. pull your radiator
2. take off your fan. from the 4 bolts
3 get a impact with a 24mm socket and a impact gun that will fit just enough to break the crank bolt loose, torque spec for 22re is 116 ft lbs i think.. yours may be different.
4 you maye need a pulley puller to pull off your harmonic balancer pulley. or you maybe will able to tap it wit a deadblow or mallet until it breaks fear and slides off of shaft.
5 alot of knocker loose/wd40/liquid wrench/pentrating oil makes step 4 alot easier..
6 you now realizied you should hae place cardboard under your trucks because you made a mess of coolant all over you garage floor, no worries break out garden hose and spray down the drive way..
7 you will need a seal puller/ or a few smalle screw drivers/ a drill and drill bit 1/16" and some sheet metal screws.
drill a few holes into metal part of the seals screw in sheet metal screw into holes, use back side of roofing hammer, crowbar, to slowly pull seal out of housing. not allowing seal to bind up on any given side of front housing.
8 look on the internet for correct front main oil seal, drive all over acrossed town to find the right one, bring the old one with you, and harmonic balance to determine you get the rigt seal fom parts store, i hate making more than one trip..
9 call you buddy or a co work that envies you just because you have a garage and all you vehicles in your yard work like they should unlike his.. junk pile or cars and trucks
10 have him do the rest of the work and stand there drinking a cold beer behind his back.

Dale813

Just had my Timing belt and all that good stuff replaced 2 weeks ago. Toyota told me was leaking real bad at valve cover gaskets. (WRONG) . Turned out it was leaking like a siv at the Cam seals. cam seals never replaced at 157k. were hard and brittle. breaking in little pieces. My Mechanic said should be soft.

All nice and pretty now.

bob hennig

Oil Pump driven by crank on front of engine behind the pulley, lower timing gear if bad will leak good. Find many leak after installing new pump because soft seal will roll lip out and lose spring tension ring. remove and replace with shim stock to prevent seal edge roll over. Bob

1990yota-pickup

put grease, in the inside lip of your new front main seal.

to prevent the tension spring from popping out of place..

smithoman

I'm ready to make a 1,000 mile journey to Colorado and my mechanic said that I've got to be careful about oil in the timing belt area. I'm hoping that it isn't a problem and I can drive out and fix it later. But I'm going to pull the timing cover and see what's going on in there.

There is caked on goo all over the bottom of the front of the engine and the front skit plate is also caked. I'm going to clean everything off as advised above and then locate the source.

I'm not quite sure where the cam plugs are located. Would I have to pull the intake manifold to get to those?

I'll post what I find later this week. Thanks all, smitho :=)

Dale813

when you say cam plugs, im thinking cam seals. No, you do not have to pull intake to get to them.
I think there are plugs on the back of the motor that have something to do with cam or crank but still dont think intake would come into play.

JDS1992

I have a small oil leak looks like its right above cylinder number 5 i changed the all the plugs and there was excessive black around it.cud it be a bad cam seal?

rainman88

88 3.0 4runner pouring oil from the front,bout 295,000 mi. just gunna replace all gaskets and seals that are on the block first,any suggestions, comments?are there any specialty tools i need,besides a wheel puller?(would have started a thread but only have 3 posts)

1990yota-pickup

make a list of all the tools and parts that you are going to need.. and make a good plan so you dont waste countless hours back and forth from the parts store...

rainman88

is a wheel puller the only odd tool i need?also anyone know where to get a good pdf shop manual?

sb5walker

For the #5 cyl leak, that's very common on the veezy, have had that off and on since I bought the truck 15 years ago. It's the right side valve cover gasket. Only way I got that to stop leaking was to remove the cover, clean THOROUGHLY, use dealer gasket and camshaft plug, and most important, coat both sides of gasket and plug in a thin amount of the Toyota black sealant. That works for 6-8 years.

For front main seal, there is a potential ambush in store for you. In order to access the seal, you have to get the crank timing gear off. On many engines, that can be pulled off by hand (very important to pull it straight and even - if you attempt to pry on one side, it gets cocked and locks right up). On SOME engines, like mine for example, that thing won't come off for love nor money. I tried to get it off when I changed head gaskets in 2001 at 218k miles (the seal wasn't leaking then). Would NOT come off. Even tried spraying PB Blaster and soaking overnight. One trouble is you can't pry too hard because you're prying against the soft aluminum oil pump, and of course you don't want to damage that. So I gave up.

Of course, a couple years later, it began to leak out the bottom of the lowest timing cover.

One thing I tried did work very well - I switched to Valvoline MaxLife, an excellent semi-synthetic high mileage oil that contains more seal-swelling esters. That did work - in about three weeks the oil leak essentially ended. So that's a good thing to do in the short term for any leak out of front or rear main seals, or cam seals.

I decided to get that beast timing gear off when I changed the belt recently. I again sprayed with PB Blaster, and drilled two holes sized for 5mm threads in the front and then tapped them and screwed in two 5mm threaded stock and used a puller. If I had to do it over I would have used a slightly larger thread since the puller had to really work to get the *$@&% thing off. It was really frozen on there. I got tension on the puller and then did a lot of tapping (not too hard) on the gear with a hammer. It did eventually come off, tho. I had bought a new gear from the dealer, which is good since the hammering damaged the old one.


EDIT:
Those are questions that probably should be in the Newb Tech forum since they are basic and have been asked about a million times. Read the FAQs and search in this and the Newb Tech forum. You'll find links to answers in this post (and other posts in the same thread): http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/sh...53#post2919053

1990yota-pickup

you may want a seal puller.. and a good set of pic's and hooks to hell pull the old front seal out. it can be a bit trickie..

you may want to drill small holes in the seal.. and use sheet metal screws and use a pry bar or a claw hammer to pull out the seal slowly..


you may get away with lightly tapping the main pulley with a rubber mallet to get it to slide off the crank pulley. but then again you may need the puller. i recommend to use pleanty of pentrating lubercation..

rainman88

thanks gents,i really loved my 86 22r but thanks to some little old lady it got totaled out.bought it new,really loved the 22r and am wondering if i made a mistake with the 6 cyl.oh well i have to learn this motor now.thanks for your help guys.

1990yota-pickup

a engine is a engine.. some are just not equal..

sb5walker

I drilled two small holes in the seal being VERY careful not to touch either the sealing surface in the oil pump body or the crankshaft with the drill, and then used sheet metal screws as mentioned. Just get them in there enough to grab the seal and then pull them by the heads.

To tap the seal into place I used the timing gear which worked very well. It didn't get it all the way seated, but it got it most of the way on there perfectly straight. I then went round and round with a 3/8" socket extension and tapped it home. Use grease as mentioned.

1990yota-pickup

Did you pack grease inside the seal around the spring, it help keeping the seal from drying out plus the grease keeps that spring from popping out..


Good job, with the removal and intstallation...

alotof people have problems with just taking there crankshaft bolt off.. a short impact gun like a kolbalt one from lowes is just big enough to fit in there and break that bolt loose..

Ensure you thighten the crank bolt to its proper Ft lbs