[Guest]

It seemed like too many things were working against me this evening. Finally, I just gave up and lit up a cigar to ponder my options.

First, the good news: Fired my rebuilt motor up on the very first try and everything sounded great. She seemed to stumble a bit once warm and I suspect I need to work on the timing a bit more. Everything else with regards to oil pressure and temperature looked great.

Now, the bad news: Seems like I have a strange fluid seepage which is dripping down the front side of the flexplate. Small puddle under the car and I "think" it looks more like the 90w toploader fluid as opposed to motor oil but I can not be sure. I only idled the car and had it supported on ramps so I never tried the clutch and/or the transmission.

One other detail....I "felt" the underneath surface of the transmission and it was indeed warm. This surprised me since I did not think the transmission would generate any heat when the car was in neutral.

I did rebuild the tranny about six months ago so perhaps I have something wrong there in terms of front seals, etc. My only other thought is perhaps there is a leaking oil galley plug or something else on the rear surface of the engine. I am certainly not looking forward to pulling either the engine or transmission back out again.

Any suggestions, thoughts or comments here?

 

[whisperer]

I'm a little bit confused, help me out here. I'm assuming that you mean flywheel when you are saying flexplate? A manual flywheel has no holes that oil can transfer from one side of the plate to the other so if the fluid is on the engine side of the flywheel it almost certainly is engine oil. Also it must be coming from either the rear crankshaft seal, the rear cam softplug, or the oil galley plugs on the back of the block. Are you sure that oil's on the flywheel and not running down from a leaky manifold or valve cover?

The heat in the trans likely just got transfered from metal-to-metal contact with the engine, and radiated from the exhaust. It had been running for a while, right?

 

[Guest]

This fluid is definitely trickling down the front surface of the flexplate which bolts onto the bellhousing. I looked up there and thought perhaps it was the rearmost bolts of the oil pan but it doesnt seem clear where it is originating. If this is as you state engine oil, then perhaps there is something wrong with the crankshaft bearing, etc. Better speak with the engine builder...

Arghhhhhhh!!!!

 

[GypsyR]

Having been burned once by this, my first suspect is always the rear intake seal. It's amazing how oil can leak there, trickle all the way down the block and fool you into thinking it's something else. It certainly could be any of the other things Whisperer mentioned though.
It's normal for a tranny to warm up. Smokey Yunick once fooled about with oil pumps and found that an oil pump all by itself could heat oil up to 160 degrees or so, just by pumping oil. The gears in a tranny do the much same thing but to lesser extent as the gears don't mesh as tightly. We discovered this by doing some off the wall stuff with a race bike transmission. We were surprised how warm the tranny got by working it out on a water dyno without an engine even attached to it. Of course heat is also transferred by a running engine.

 

[matty]

Did you add locktite or some other kind of sealer to the 6 flywheel bolts? If I remember correctly, those 6 bolts need the sealer to prevent oil from the crank from seeping through.