Hope the summer is offering lots of chances to drive.
I am on the horns of a dilemma. I have a1963 Laurentian, straight 6, 3 on the tree.
I have a serious oil leak that appears to be a rear main seal, or a poorly done gasket on the oil pan. I took it to my local mechanic two weeks, and we tried a plasticizer to restore/soften the rubber seals. It has not done much good. I was planning to drive back from Regina, Saskatchewan to Montreal. I don't feel like that is a good idea. I went through 3 litres/700 miles of mostly highway driving over the past 10 days. I've only had the car a few weeks.
I don't have the facilities or time to be doing any work myself. I'm looking for someone who can offer an opinion and some advice. There is more to the story, but those are the nuts and bolts.
I personally dont know any shops that per se work on our older cars but I use Hawk Auto for some work on my 2010 diesel truck. Terry and his helper are decent guys. Ill check with some car buddies and see if there are any recommendations from them.
If you put synthetic oil in it, it will leak more than regular oil in these old gaskets.
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
If you're pumping that much oil, it's going to be a rear main. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If it's any consolation, it cost me $1,800USD to do the rear main on an M156 Mercedes V8 a couple of years ago. I've exhausted several tubes of Preparation H trying to recover from the trauma. Doing your stovebolt with the 3-speed will be WAY cheaper.
Mark at MB was not able to do the work for at least two weeks. He recommended Rod over at Zaran's Cylinder Head repair. I spoke to Rod, and he thought they could drop the pan and put in a new seal. He had one of his guys, Ray, who works on the older cars, come in for the job. He had to call around to see if he could get a rear main seal and a pan gasket.
I dropped the car off on Monday afternoon with plans to pick it up Tuesday. I stopped by Tuesday afternoon. The engine was out of the car! As it turns out, the cross member prevents the pan from coming out. So out it came. The seal was hard as a rock. Parts we delayed coming from Winnipeg. I picked up the car on Thursday morning.
I was dry underneath while they had it running in the parking lot.
Once I got going around town, I noticed it was leaking, but substantially less. By this time I had to get moving on my 3000 kms drive back to Montreal.
I made it back today. I used about 4 litres of oil for roughly 2000 miles. Which was less than half what it was leaking before the work was done. On day four of my drive, I started to think that the PCV system might be play. I decided to wait until I was home to explore that possibility. It would explain the continued leak.
Thanks to Rod and Ray at Zaran's. And thanks to everyone who offered advice and suggestions here!
