Wow over 10000 words, can anybody believe my stories go on that long?
Anyway
I am really pissed, I am positive I am doing this right so I am under the truck trying to determine
exactly where this oil is coming from, I have lights, I have mirrors, I have a lot of oil in my hair.
I finally decide that is come from somewhere up on the engine.
I go to my buddy who works at the bus lines and quiz him as I had told him about the 45 minutes the first time and I tell him that that it was 15 minutes this time. Well of course he works on these all the time
and would have checked the engine over better than I had in the first place, so when he thinks about it he says: "Is there any oil in the intake valley?".
Well apparently when anything leaks on top of the engine it runs down the valley and exits through the bell housing and down the side of the block right about the corner of the oil pan...
I knew it was wet up there because I had a leaking fuel filter the week before and just assumed that it was pooled and hadn't evaporated yet.
So I degreased the entire valley so it was almost spotless and my buddy told me to "sprinkle baby powder all over the engine", I used wild rose as that was what Connie had in stock.
Within minutes of starting up I saw my leak exactly where it was and where it was going to. Oh and he says he doesn't even bother to wash it off after as it makes the engine smell nice and he is right.
Ahhhh.......I was under there every day for 11 days straight......
A little persausion and the axle was in place.
Notice that is not 5/8" to bump stop anymore.
As it took me much longer that anticipated I did not have time to put rear springs on before leaving for Cuba and I had not bought them as I wanted to see how much higher the front was going to be than the before. So I drove around for almost 2 weeks with the front about 5" higher than the back, and people laughed and pointed, and my wife said "your tires look so small" to which I retorted "you're right, I need bigger tires :flipoff:".
Anyway when I finally got the rears which are F350 HD springs to install we had those snow storms in between and I had a 1'x2' ball of frozen snow and ice wedged up above the rear diff being held in place by the fuel tank with all the fuel lines and wires and ABS lines and wires frozen into it, luckily it didn't rip anything apart and after having a furnace fan blowing on it for 2 hours it finally thawed enough to break apart.
The good news is with the rears in it looks really good, I am about 4" over stock, the bad news that even the dorky guy at Canadian Tire gas bar said "Do you have other tires for that? They look really small." so bigger tires in the spring.
And do I think I am crazy for going through all that work and would I do it again? Yes and yes I would as the garage cost on just the oil pan part is at least $2000, even in the US they pay that much. The rad, oh well my mistake.....the water pump needed to be changed and those would have all been extra costs as well as having the springs changed.
dj
