Oil pump (crankshaft front) oil seal failures

[gregsupra4]

Chris, this engine is a brand new short block from Toyota hence the crank is factory.

 

Strange thing is that we have not had this problem with any of the bottom end rebuilds we have done.

 

The company that we use for our crank work also do work for most of the race teams that are on the estate and noe of them have had any problems.

 

 

As to the seal and instaling it it can only go on one way unless the person putting it on is a complete idiot ( We are not)

 

And yes the new seal'sl do have the rotation arrow same as the old ones.

[Chris Wilson]

I am at a bit of a loss, you MUST strip the next pump. Maybe the Toyota short block had shrapnel in it? I have heard of this, but disblieved it. But if they are old stock, or not stored properly, or even farmed out to outside builders nowadays, who knows?

[Sheefa]

Slightly off-topic and apologies but I think Chris, Steve (Blue Bullet) also had a seal failure on his stock TT engine, although he had Hybrids fitted a few years back IIRC.

 

Greg, didn't Turbofit replace, rectify the problem and now all is OK I take it? His car has been sold successfully so I assume all was good mate. Did he have any modified internals?

 

Greg

[Thorin]

Maybe the Toyota short block had shrapnel in it? I have heard of this, but disblieved it.

 

 

Chris, I've heard it before too, I believe Titan in the US offer an engine check-over (for an additional fee of course ) on new short block sales just to check for shrapnel, torque settings etc. etc.

[gsportcars]

I just came across this thread by chance there and have read the whole thing.

I have myself just replaced a crankshaft oil seal. The story in brief is that I have a 2jz-gte lump just fitted in my Lexus IS200. It has an XS power single turbo conversion also.

We were out mapping the car and using a base map from another TT supra to start from. We managed to get 3 third gear full throttle runs which were fine and decided to go for a 4th gear full throttle run. The accelration was fine until I slowed down and discovered smoke entering the car. I stopped and found the front of the engine leaking very heavily with oil while the engine was idling.

My first thought was that it was a badly sealed sump. This was because I had swapped the sump with one from a GS300 in order to place the oil pan at the front of the engine rather than the rear. This was to clear the IS200 subframe.

After dropping the subframe and removing and re-fitting the sump, the leak was still present when I started the engine.

Next on the list was the crank seal.

When I removed the seal I did notice that the tension spring in the seal had popped off and was no longer in the seal. I ordered the new seal and after fitting it, the car has been fine. So far I have only driven the car to test for the oil leak though. As the car is not fully mapped I cannot drive the car to hard quite yet. It will be mapped within the next 2 weeks though.

 

I bought the engine from a local breakers so I put the failing seal down to the fact that the engine was sitting for so long not running and maybe the seal had dried out etc which caused it to fail. I have not changed my oil pump but I do have another block that I aquired in pieces that I can take an oil pump from if need be.

 

I am told there was only about 45K on the engine but I have yet to see an engine from a breakers with more than 45K on it:rolleyes: .

Other than that I know the engine was pretty much standard before as it was running factory turbos and injectors etc etc.

 

I am just hoping that at least my problem is sorted but after reading this thread I am not so sure.

I hope this is of some help if any at all and I will following up on this when I know more.

 

Gav.

[JamieP]

Update, Oil seal now changed, we modded the spring and took 5mm off it, ive took it for a blast and all seems fine so far, im taking the car home now and im going to moniter it closely, lets hope this has sorted it and thanks to every one that added possitive information to the thread:)

[JamieP]

Update, Oil seal now changed, we modded the spring and took 5mm off it, ive took it for a blast and all seems fine so far, im taking the car home now and im going to moniter it closely, lets hope this has sorted it and thanks to every one that added possitive information to the thread:)

 

 

 

FFS, Forget that, still leaking.

[tooquicktostop]

Bad news Jamie , I have been reading this thread with interest and hope you get it sorted soon

[Branners]

FFS, Forget that, still leaking.

 

 

 

dont wish to worry you but I know another member who kept blowing out crank oil seals, eventually found the bottom end was shagged and had a new engine put in which obviously stopped the problem.

 

Hopefully they can find the problem with yours and you wont need to do that.

 

JB

[Tricky-Ricky]

Hasn't Jamie got a just rebuilt engine?

[JamieP]

dont wish to worry you but I know another member who kept blowing out crank oil seals, eventually found the bottom end was shagged and had a new engine put in which obviously stopped the problem.

 

Hopefully they can find the problem with yours and you wont need to do that.

 

JB

 

Thanks JB but as greg stated this is a brand new short engine from toyota, i was keeping it quiet but the other engine was removed last week for a 3.4 kit to be fitted and as i didnt want the car off the rd i brought this as a spare, wish i never bothered now.

[JamieP]

Just took off my breather hoses and there is something in the exhaust side breather pipe where it loops under the air filter (Condensation is trapped in the loop i expect) as i blow down it i can hear it gluging, also they are full of some white gunk, looks like condensation and oil vapour has stuck to the sides of the pipe, dipped the oil and checked under the filler cap and HG appears to be fine, the inlet side breather has no issues and is flowing freely.

Im going to clean the pipes out and route them so there is no bends.

[dandan]

Do you make a lot of short trips in your car Jamie?

 

With an open breather system a certain amount of white sludge is not unheard of. When was the last time those breather hoses were definitely clean - mileage wise?

[JamieP]

Do you make a lot of short trips in your car Jamie?

 

With an open breather system a certain amount of white sludge is not unheard of. When was the last time those breather hoses were definitely clean - mileage wise?

 

 

Yea i do a fair few short trips in it, id guess that them pipes was new about 500-700 miles ago, i changed from braided to some blue mocal stuff.

Edit, its not an open system, the pipe goes back to the intake pipe on the airfilter to create vacume, thing is i had the same setup on the old engine and never had a issue.

 

[Digsy]

Condensation in any breather system is a possibility. Wherever possible the pipes should run downhill from intake to engine so that any fluid ends up back into the crankcase. "Low spots" should be avioded.

[JamieP]

Condensation in any breather system is a possibility. Wherever possible the pipes should run downhill from intake to engine so that any fluid ends up back into the crankcase. "Low spots" should be avioded.

 

 

 

Ok thanks ill move the catch can to the top left of the engine bay so its higher than everything else.

[Chris Wilson]

If you have further trouble put a manometer on the engine, off one of the cam boxes, and see if there is positive or negative pressure in the crankcase / top of engine.

[JamieP]

New oil pump is arriving friday, that way we have new crank/ oil pump/ and seal, there is nothing more i can do, car is going back next week, lets see what happens, ive been using silkolene 10-50 pro s and never had a problem before, do you recomend i stick with this oil or try something else?

[Chris Wilson]

I ran my MKIV on 15/50 with no problem, I'd stick with the oil you are using.

[JohnA]

speaking of manometers, you may need one of these 'Menghelic' manometers, with a scale of cm or inches of water ideally.

We're talking about fractions of a psi here, not atmospheres.

[Tricky-Ricky]

So are you saying that a pressure of milibars is enough to blow out/cause failure of a crankshaft oil seal?

[Chris Wilson]

Doing a bit of lateral thinking, what if, for some reason due to the breather system, there is a big depression in the crankcase at some times? Could this suck the seal lips IN enough to ping the spring off the seal??

[JamieP]

Doing a bit of lateral thinking, what if, for some reason due to the breather system, there is a big depression in the crankcase at some times? Could this suck the seal lips IN enough to ping the spring off the seal??

 

 

 

Im sure each time its failed the spring was inplace, maybe greg can check this with Pete though.

[b_have]

I did wonder that, with a pcv in the system, I am seeing large (plenum) vacuum at higher rpm overuns.If the hotside vent is compromised this could cause exactly that. The spring would be far easier to escape under vacuum than pressure.

[Digsy]

Doing a bit of lateral thinking, what if, for some reason due to the breather system, there is a big depression in the crankcase at some times? Could this suck the seal lips IN enough to ping the spring off the seal??

 

I think this is a possibility, yes. Or maybe just to suck the seal lips off the shaft (oo-er).

 

Just to play devil's advocate: How sure can you be that the spring doesn't ping off while the seal is being removed?

 

Crankcase vacuum would be increased by either a faulty PCV valve (not acting as a restriction on part throttle) or a restriction in the WOT breather.

 

NOW: This has made me rember something that I almost posted up a few weeks ago. I have recently been involved in some breather system development at work and as part of the work a catch tank was put in both the part throttle and WOT breather lines to measure the amount of carried over oil in both circuits.

 

The WOT breather as standard is a hose only a few inches long - much like the stock MKIV system. In order to fit the catch tank, these were lenghtened using wide bore (15mm or so) pipe until there was enough room to mount the (very large) tank. The total length of the WOT breather ended up being a couple of feet of hose.

 

As odd as it may seem, this additional pipe length offered enough restriction to double the crankcase depression on part throttle, and halve it at WOT.