Re: Rear main seal wear

["Dave Swingle <swingle@xxxx>" <swingle@xxxx>]

I've seen an issue on the front main seal (the one at the back of the 
car) where the seal wears a groove in the pulley. The fix is a new 
pulley, sleeve the old pulley, or (this is what we did) turn down the 
original pully microscopically on a lathe to clean it up. I suppose 
the same thing could happen at the other (flywheel) end, but as you 
note it's the crankshaft itself that would be the problem. I find it 
hard to believe that the crank would be warped enough to clear the 
seal and not cause a tremendous vibration in the flywheel. 

For the cost of fixing that you can buy a lot of cardboard for the 
garage floor......

OR - it's just a flaky mechanic. There are actually two places that 
it seals, the rubber seal itself AND the retainer that holds the seal 
to the block. If you really want to make a go at it, get him to open 
it up again, remove the seal and retainer, and either show you the 
crank warpage (with a dial indicator) or the groove (not likely). 
I'll bet its not either and he just didn't get it buttoned up right. 
Or you have a leak from somewhere else. 

I would not use oil additives on anything. Run away run away!. 

Dave

[duplicate quote snipped buy moderator]