Quick write up on a rear main insatall

Ok. heres a quick write up on how to do a rear main seal. If I missed anything feel free to add to it. I'ts late at night and some people have been asking me about when I did mine. So here it is
This is for the 4.0

Remove steering and track bar(I had to because I didnt use any jacks or anything. but im also sitting at 6inchs of lift)
Drain oil.
Remove oil pan.
Remove #7 main cap
Loosen caps 6,5,and 4
Remove lower portion of seal out of #7 main cap.
Use brass punch and your choice of hitting device. I debated on a baby seal club or a rubber mallet.
After hours of debating I used the rubber mallet. lol
Hit seal on left side, switch to right side. It will break loose faster if you switch back and forward left to right.
Theres a wire inside of the seal. Its a little dot on each end. That is the preferable place to hit.
Once upper seal is removed.
Coat the new piece with lots of assembly lube and i mean lots!!!
The easier the better right.
I choose to even squirt a bunch up around the crank.(all the extra is going to be pushed out and you just wipe it off)
Also make sure you place seal in correctly, with the lip facing the front of the motor.
Now coat lower seal with rtv and slide into place with lip facing correct way.
Install main cap.

Torque specs are 85 ft/lbs for the caps. So tighten to 40 ft/lbs and smack rubber mallet til cap seats. continue this on the rest of the loose caps. making sure you tighten the caps from the inside out(ie. cap #4,5,3,6,2,7,1) then go back and re torque to 85 using the same technique.

Scrap off all old gaskets. Apply silicone (or gasket) to oil pan.Tighten oil pan, install steering and track bar.

Nice write-up! I need to do this soon. Anyone have any pics of this process?

heh... You lucked out. My upper seal required a 6lb maul and about an hour of hard labor to get out. Luckily I didn't scratch the crank in the process.

Also, replace your oilpan seal while you're down there. You might as well.

Further note - don't put RTV all over the entire lower half of the seal, it'll be horrible to get out of the bearing cap next time if you do that... insert it into the bearing cap then put a thin layer of RTV on the ends where they go across the face of the bearing cap.

Like CharlieMopps says, replace the oilpan seal while you're working on it (use the metal+rubber felpro one, they are reputed to be the best around and only cost like 18 bucks from rockauto.com). You may also want to replace the timing cover at the front of the block and its gasket, but you'll have to remove the harmonic balancer to do that. Also, check around the valve cover for leaks before doing this whole job... mine wasn't responsible for the oil leak but a lot of people mistakenly replace their oil pan gasket + rear main seal when the oil is actually leaking out of the valve cover gasket.

kastein said:

Also, check around the valve cover for leaks before doing this whole job... mine wasn't responsible for the oil leak but a lot of people mistakenly replace their oil pan gasket + rear main seal when the oil is actually leaking out of the valve cover gasket.

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this is true. im glad i knew that before