jared41

Bought an 88' pickup a few weeks ago, 3.0L v6. Yeah I already know about the motor, so if you could hold your swap jokes that would be great (:

When I bought it, I knew it had a small oil leak. Being naive about the motor, I thought the oil leak was the front crankshaft seal. The oil accumulates on the top of the oil pan lip so I was hoping for the best haha.

Took everything apart last Sunday after buying my seal, some belts, and a cap & rotor just for a little tune up while I was under the hood. When I took the timing covers off, I noticed that the oil was running down the block (behind the timing belt) and accumulating on/around the crankshaft as well as the oil pan. The timing belt was perfectly clean, it wasn't covered in oil and it looks like its new.

After scratching my head and calling a few people for advice, I decided I wasn't going to bother taking the water pump and timing belt off to do the seal. I'm assuming (and I was told) that it is my head gaskets and that I'm boned.

So after looking into a rebuild and how much it is going to cost me, I think I am going to do that on my summer budget instead of a SAS ): But before I do, I have also heard from a couple people to re-torque my heads down... which leads me to my question for anyone that has a 3vze with a similar problem:

With a (very small) oil leak coming from your heads, would re-torquing work? Even for a band-aid fix.

Thanks for any constructive input/advice.

yayfortrees

Are you sure it's not just the valve cover(s) that's leaking?

Typically, if you have a leaking head gasket, you have more problems than just a little oil running down the side. That, to me, sounds like a valve cover leak, which is quite common on almost every motor ever made.

If it IS the head gasket(s), re-torquing might work only if the head bolts were loose to begin with, which is a slight possibility, especially if they were replaced before, and whoever did the work didn't torque them properly. (How's that for a run-on sentence!)

Marc

x2. I think for a head gasket to leak oil it would also leak antifreeze into the engine.

betelnut

On the 3VZE I just took apart, both camshaft seals had popped out. That's one place to look.

jared41

I'll look into the valve covers, I'm green to say the least mechanically and the guy I had look at it didn't say anything about them. Thanks for the input guys.

rlordjr

So, I just did my V6 valve covers and apparently they were not the ONLY source of leakage. If anything, there is more leaking now, possibly because after sealing the valve covers it pushes more oil out the other mystery leak? It was HARD to find the leaking from the valve covers until i got the heads really clean and could see the seeping oil coming from the back corners of both VC's while the motor was running. Very common as you all know. My advice is simply to clean that sucker as well as you can so you can see EXACTLY where the leakage is occurring. Cam seals are also common as was noted so I may be looking there next as well. Really, once you've taken off that intake plenum once, it ain't so bad doing it again.

betelnut

Ha, yeah, rlordjr, I did the exact same thing. First time taking off the plenum took me half a day to be really careful, label all the hoses, take pics, get all the old hoses unstuck and replace brittle ones that broke. Second time took me less than two hours, zip zip!