oil leak from timing cover

ca91mkIII

New Member
May 23, 2012
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Franklin
I was trying to start my freshly rebuilt motor today and it sprung an oil leak. It is coming from the timing cover where it seals to the engine. What is the best way to replace that gasket? I am more concerned with causing problems with the head gasket if anyone can give me some advice on replacing this gasket. Thank you in advance.
 

supraguy@aol

Well-Known Member
Dec 30, 2005
4,231
36
48
Atlanta
Did you have the block decked without the rear timing cover?
If so, then it's not the gasket's fault, it's the timing cover's.
 

ca91mkIII

New Member
May 23, 2012
126
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Franklin
Yeah the block and the timing cover were decked together. I finally uncovered the front of the motor enough to see that the leak is coming from the side above one of the bolt holes. It looks as though the gasket didn't stay in place when I put the cover on the motor. I forgot to mention in my original post that it is a 7M motor if that makes a difference to anyone looking at this.
 

suprra_girl

7M POWAH! ;)
Mar 30, 2005
1,776
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Auckland, New Zealand
www.supra.co.nz
Damn, got some bad news for ya buddy, speaking from experience lol

We had a 7m that had an issue with the tensioner, it was a plastic type idler on it rather than steel like most of them but it was from the same company that did the steel ones so we figured it'd be okay, turned out no.. no way haha. There have been many reports of these plastic idler tensioners going bad, anyway what happened was the idler must have gotten too hot and seized or something to that effect and ended up shredding itself and threw itself into the seals and obliterated the oil pump driveshaft seal so oil was pissing out everywhere.

It was not long built so I thought I would be cheeky and slip the front timing cover out, fix the problems and then slip it back in. Unfortunately when it came time to slip it back in, there was no way it was going to, it was just going to wreck the head gasket so we ended up stripping the head off and doing another hg lol. There you have it, doing a hg on a 7m that actually didn't need one xD Just in case you want to add that statement to Guinness world record book :p

Admittedly I didn't loosen the sump which would theoretically give it enough room to slide in but we had already powered the engine and had it running so it would have been ill advised to do that trick anyhow.
 

ca91mkIII

New Member
May 23, 2012
126
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Franklin
I ended up finding a thread from three years ago about someone else having the same problem I am. 1J highly recommended taking off the head and redoing the whole thing. Not looking forward to doing that since I literally put the last piece on before being able to fire up the motor two days ago and discovered this problem yesterday. My shitty ass luck!!! :(