Removing the Rear Main Seal

The rear main seal is out.  Removing it wasn’t too difficult.

Here’s a side-by-side of the old seal (left) and the new teflon seal.   They’re both exactly the same size, though the teflon seal is supposed to be installed flush.  The seals are 100mm in diameter and 10mm high.   All of the pictures in this blog are high resolution, click on the picture for higher resolution.

 

To remove the old seal I drilled a hole in the seal at 9 o’clock and inserted a drywall screw with a fender washer on the end.  It was a longer drywall screw,  the screw head needed to be about the same height as the edge of the case.   I also drilled slowly, and inserted a rag to keep the metal filings from flying into the engine.  While the seal is rubber (or plastic) on the outside, I was drilling into metal.

I didn’t have a slide hammer or fancy seal puller, but I did have a small wonder bar (flat pry bar).  I placed a block of wood on the edge of the engine case to use as a fulcrum.  While applying pressure to the pry bar, I tapped on it with a hammer — not too hard.  The seal slowly began to rise and then quickly came out.

Unfortunately I won’t be installing the new seal into the engine today.  The dealer I bought this from shipped all of the parts as shown in this next photo. All of the seals were in the same bag as sharp-edged objects such as drive-shaft boot clamps (not visible) clips, clutch bolts and drive-shaft bolts.  They were also subject to the weight of the clutch components sliding around in the same box.

The dealer is supposed to be sending me a new seals ASAP.  I don’t want to risk using these unless I’m forced to.

The main seal was deformed when I pulled it out of the bag as shown in the next picture at 12 o’clock.  Now this teflon is flexible, and generally tough, but that’s not the point.  The seal could have been over-extended and there may be small scratches that accelerate wear.  It just sad that the person doing the packing couldn’t take the time to protect these expensive parts from damage during shipping.  

The clutch seal (for clutch rod piston) had a couple of notches taken out of the edges (red arrow for one).   I can’t be sure that this damage happened during shipping, but with the part in the bag with lots of sharp-edged products, there’s every possibility that it did.   

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