Greetings my fellow club members.
HELP!!!
Problem: I need to replace rear main engine rope seals on on my 72 V12 without having to pull out the engine.

Am dropping transmission to replace it's seals but do not want to pull out engine to replace the rear main engine seals. Have been told this can be done with a "sneaky pete" seal remover/replace tool.

Any suggestions on best way to approach this project?

Thanks,
Andrés

 

trying to think about how to support engine with tranny out of the way as you remove oil pan- gues you can rest the bellhousing or end of block on a jack clear of pan- if you havent used a sneaky pete before, concept involves using a flexible wire with a corkscrew on the end- its been quite a while but seems clear that rear main bearing cap gets removed- can remove lower half of seal easily- corkscrew end of the pete then gets screwed into end of upper half of seal which sits above crank which is still in place- pull top half of seal out and discard- then run corkscrew end of wire over the top of crank and when end emerges on the other side, screw corkscrew into end of new top seal- lubricate new seal well and pull on end of wire to pull new seal over top of crank until it is positioned where you want it- unscrew the pete and reinstall bearing cap with new seal- all to the best of my recollection- hope it helps

 

Thanks Whattrouble,
Thanks for the reply on the sneaky pete in the R/R of top rear engine seal. Problem with this is that the rope seal has a nail-type securing the middle of rope seal at the top of the engine. this makes it impossible to pull the rope seal through. I hear that there is not an upgraded version of the seal that does away with that nail-type holder. I went ahead and replaced the lower seal and rear bearing block seal and hopefully that will solve the problem.
Andrés
72 XKE V12

 

cant begin to tell you how pleased i am that you mentioned the top seal being held fast- reason being... after i got done passing along the info, i resolved to go ahead and replace my own on my 71- blew a head gasket and have been replacing anything questionable with engine out- but i confess to reinstalling oil pan without doing rear main- two ways to do these jobs: do asolutely everything because you're in there or do whatever is reasonable- being unable to choose one of those paths leads to terrible self-doubt, but i digress
so the question is, does anybody know whether the upper half of the rear main seal is held captive on the 71? sure dont want to tear off the pan only to get the job done half way when it wasnt leaking noticeably to begin with
thanks

 

As an aside, there was another recent thread mentioning "sneaky pete" so you can search for it easily. In that thread was a link to a site that shows the replacement of rope type rear seals. Well worth reading. After reading the cautions, you may wish to avoid the sneaky pete method because it does not allow the seating procedure to be carried out correctly.

 

believe i will let my sleeping dog lie

 

hasn't anybody heard the joke? how are little puppy"s and jaguars alike? they leave little puddles everywhere they go....least all mine do