Today was rear main seal day. This was done with the 430 in my 59 bird. The engine was jacked up and boards placed under the mounts to hold it up. The only thing disconnected to jack the engine up, other than engine mounts, was the upper radiator hose. The oil pump was removed in order to remove the oil pan. Removal of the rear main bearing cap went smoothly. See picture of bearing cap with lower rope seal behind it. Removal of the upper seal was difficult, we used a screw into the seal and one person had to pull while the other turned the crankshaft. The seal was really deteriorated and we broke off about 3/4 of an inch at a time. But eventually it all came out fine. One person told me beforehand that some engines have a pin in the seal channel to prevent seal rotation. No such pin was present in my engine. See the picture of our rudimentary removal tool...long dry wall screw and vise grips. I used FelPro neoprene gaskets to replace the original gaskets. The gaskets on the sides of the bearing cap use a nail to expand them. You can see them inserted before being pounded in in one of the pictures. In the picture of the bottom of the engine with pan removed you can see paint on a counterweight that looks roughly like a "T". One of the biggest problems we had was getting the oil pump back in during reassembly. The drive shaft had fallen out during dissasembly. We tried for an hour to get the shaft properly seated in the pump. When the two pump bolts were tightened the pump did not lie flat on the seating surface. We finally loosened the distributor so the pump could be properly seated then tightened down the distributor. Everything ran fine after the job was finished, so this obviously worked. I had purchased a replacement pump drive shaft that is heavier duty than the original however the one "Precision Oip Pumps" sent me was several inches too short. The job took about 8 hours sart to finish. It was nice doing this on a garage lift. I couldn't imagine trying this on my back under the car.
Vern
Vern
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