Hey guys. I have a 85' pickup with the 22r and it has recently developed a oil leak. I'm getting about 3 silver dollar sized spots after it sits for a while. Looks to be coming from the top/rear of the the motor as well as the passenger side but could be elsewhere too. Just trying to find someone in the area with some more knowledge than me that would be willing to give me a hand in tearing it apart to get it fixed. I'll buy the pizza and beer of course. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Just off the top of my head... I think the only places that it could be coming from on the pax side would be the valve cover, the rear seal, the oil pressure sending unit, or the oil pan gasket, valve cover/oil pan gasket if it's on the drivers side. The front side could be timing cover or any of the previously mentioned.

I re-gasketed my old 22RE about 5 years ago, with the engine in the truck, and had zero leaks. I just pulled that motor out of my truck and other than some surface oil/grime it's still leak free. The gasket set is cheap-ish, you can get a good FEL-PRO complete set for like $50-60 and it'll have every gasket you could need and more. You'll have to drop the front diff if it's IFS to do the oil pan but it's only 3 bolts, lower it in place, do your pan gasket and jack it back up and bolt it back in.

I would start with the valve cover gasket, it's an o-ring type and gets flat and cracks w/age, it's an easy 1 hour job. Be sure you get new valve cover grommets and the half round rubbers for the head too, I always had seepage around them until I put new ones on. See if that solves the problem first... i'd just buy the complete set, buying them individually will run you close to double in the end should you need to replace any others.

 

Thanks for the reply. I ended up putting a new rear main seal in and new valve cover gasket. While I had valve cover off I noticed my timing chain guide was broken off. I assume chain slop broke it and motor just ate it up... So needless to say I'll b doing new chain, tensioner and guides soon as well. But for now no oil leaks as of yet. That rear main seal was fun. Especially trying to pull flywheel with no air tools. Had to have buddy hold the pulleys while I took breaker bar to flywheel bolts.

 

Check the inside of the timing cover where the chain would run and look for deep gouging, if the chain was slapping around in there it can wear through into the water pump.

 

When you buy your timing chain kit think about getting the kit from LC engineering. It has metal guides.