Valve Seals, Rear Main - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

dodgewolf · 01-20-2004, 21:00

'77 LTD, 351 M:

In the process of changing my valve seals and rear main oil seal. Both without removing the engine, which I don't have the equipment for.

:fly: I've heard stringing a length of soft, cotton clothesline through the sparkplug holes and rotating to TDC for each respective cylinder in the firing order as an alternative to compressed air. How effective is this at keeping the valves from dropping? Anything I should watch out for / beware of?

YTRY4 · 01-20-2004, 22:12

Wrong area to post

LunaticSVT · 01-25-2004, 11:48

moving to the right area.

Aussiblue · 01-26-2004, 00:35

Before the advent of cheap air compressors it was the way most DIYs did it.

See: http://www.geocities.com/inlinestroker/seals.html
http://nw.rhocar.org.uk/seals.htm

Traps: not enougth cord in the cylinders, lose end of cord in cylinder (cord too short), valves drop a little and rope gets caught in valves.

Aussiblue · 01-26-2004, 00:40

PS: the trick is to jam the rope up against the valves by turning the crnak by hand on the compression stroke.

302xm · 01-26-2004, 00:54

Dont you have to drop the crank to do the rear main seal Sounds like a nightmare with the engine still in the car, if its even possible

Aussiblue · 01-26-2004, 01:07

No the rear main can be levered out and replaced with the engine inplace but off course the gearbox and flywheel out. The seal is pressed in with Litchfield Tool number E9312 or similar.

Edit: oops that's for the six not sure you can do it on the V8; in fact my V8 references say you can't do it without removing the crank.

ebxr8240 · 01-26-2004, 06:20

Yep you can with out removing crank on efi Windors, but clevo's use the rope type in main, some have rear seals two piece..The old 250 sixes are a real pita to get to vertually have to pull whole engine apart...I have one XR6 that three attemps have been made to fix it last by me..Next step is a kit that goes over crank and better seal the F* cken thing won't leak next time !!!!