oil leak, prognosis?

[jekbrown]

I was changing the oil in my wife's 'new' '91 explorer today and I noticed there seemed to be a small oil leak. We just bought it a few weeks ago and I went through and did the oil filter, changed the oil, new magnetic drain plug (old one was stripped pretty bad), PCV valve, air filter etc. All the standard little junk. Anyway, I looked around the engine bay and it doesn't seem to be leaking from anywhere up top.. so I got underneath again and the pan area around the drain plug is wet with oil. Look on the sides of the pan, doesn't seem to be coming from above. Then I crawl under the front, and there seems to be some seepage out from around the lower-most pully which runs down the front and then back from there (at speed I assume). Anyway, I'm a fullsize chevy guy and dont know jack about the 4.0L v6... and my chilton book for the explorer hasn't arrived yet from the guy I bought it from on eBay. Can anyone gimme a diagnosis/pronosis based on the info I provided? I assume there is some kind of seal/gasket where the pulley goes into the block... is it the kind of thing you can change with the engine installed or is this going to be a real PITA? any info would be appreciated, thanks!

j

 

[UNCLESLiK]

that would be the harmonic balancer.....what happens is that after XXXXXX amonut of miles, the seal actually wears a slight groove in the balancer itself...i came about this problem with my 88 BII XLT. i changed the timing cover seal and it still leaked. so i talked to my parts guy at Napa <-awesome car parts! and he said the balancer has a groove in it. so there i am "Great a new balancer" $100.

anywho i didnt have to get a balancer, he gave me a balancer repair sleeve. what it is, is its a small thin ring that will fit over the balancer, covering the groove, they give you sealer to make it stay on and all you do is pull the balancer out and stick it on, change your timing cover seal, put it back together and should take care of the problem. only took me about 1-2 hours to do. the sleeve costed me around 10$....ish. just make sure you have a balancer puller to pull it off, or youll be there all day tryin to get it off, as well as risk damaging the crank.

 

[jekbrown]

awesome, thanks much for the advice. The rig has almost 160,000 miles... so I imagine I'll be fixing lots of things like this. Nickle and dime. Guess I'll head out to napa to see what they can do for me. you wouldn't happen to have a part number for that repair kit would ya? thanks again!

j

 

[UNCLESLiK]

no sir not off the top of my head, this was prolly 3 years ago. and it still doesnt leak, so i hope my recommendation will help. they should be able to look it up on their elec. parts catalog