Day 5 (Friday 7th October)
The previous evening after getting back to New York after the tyre blow out and then the oil seal leak, we had more dramatic news from back home in the UK. At about 3am UK time (about 7pm for us in the States) I got a whatsapp message from my sister that our other sister was at hospital in A&E after a night out at her university welcome dinner (and only 2 weeks into her degree). She had fallen over (and swears she wasn’t drunk at the time) whilst attempting to dance over to the bar…
Nevertheless, despite the late night waiting to hear how my sister was (she had broken her arm in two places but was otherwise fine), we woke up early with our newly formed plan to take out the 302 V8 engine and replace the rear oil seal that was leaking onto the clutch. Although I had plotted out the trip as openly as possible to allow for any issues, we needed to be in San Francisco by the 16th October to meet my sister and her boyfriend, and removing the engine had not been part of the plan. My original idea had been to drive from Niagara Falls to Chicago, and then take a route through South Dakota, Montana and then Washington State. So, we had a few days to spare but this had to be done as soon as possible. And done right first time; we couldn’t afford for it to be done badly or rushed and us breakdown again like the first misfired start. We had already lost a day driving back to New York and it would be at least one or more removing the engine. Luckily, thanks to the quick action of Ali and my dad the day before, all the parts that had been ordered as we were driving back to New York arrived literally the next morning as we got started.
We got straight to work taking the engine out. First off, we disconnected all the components, exhausts, pipes, belts, etc. taking photos as we went for reference, then it was time to lift out the engine using the newly purchased-and-collected-the-day-before engine hoist. Once the engine was out and the clutch had been taken out (which was covered in oil as suspected) we realised that the oil seal gasket was not as simple as first thought. When we had been ordering the parts, we had seen an upgraded two piece neoprene seal that came as a kit. It looked like a straightforward and easy fit but as the rear oil seal wasn’t actually visible, we weren’t completely sure it would be the right one (especially as the fitment listing on the website was not clear). The sump needed to be taken off (for a second time) to be able to get to the seal and we started to think that we would possibly have to undo the crank and the caps to be able to get to the seal which would be a lot more work.
We persevered on and when the sump was removed it became clear why it had been leaking so much…. the rear main oil seal was made from original rope cord and had about 0.25” gap end to end for the oil to escape through! No wonder it had been leaking. It definitely felt good we didn’t chance it and had made the right choice.
Fortunately, only the one rear crank cap had to be undone to fit the new seal, which was good news. The old seal was an original cord one-piece seal and we replaced it with the upgraded two-piece rubber one. With the new seal in place and another brand new sump gasket fitted, the next thing was to fit the new clutch. As said in the previous post, they didn’t have a standard clutch in stock for my 302 and we didn’t have time to wait for one, but they did have a 351 Boss clutch in stock that was ½” bigger. Ali had made several phone calls to be 100% sure that the splines in our 3-speed gearbox would definitely fit the Boss clutch and it went on beautifully.
It was time to put the engine back in. We worked into the dark to get the engine back in place with everything connected back up and by the time we were done it was a bit too late to test it out properly, so we went to bed after a very long exhausting day.
So to sum it all up, we lifted an 302 V8 engine out, did all the work to repair the leak and clutch and dropped it back in, in a day. Amazed.
