CTD2001

I hope you guys can help my buddy and I out. He has a 1997 12v 5spd with almost 300K on it. Two weekends ago we went snowmobiling up north and took his truck. Truck ran fine and when we got back home, there was a very large amount of oil in my driveway from his truck. His truck set in the drive for about 5 minutes at idle and left about a 2ft diameter oil spot. He said the truck leaked but not that much. He crawled under his truck at his house and noticed the leak was very big, much bigger then before. Now we are trying to figure out what is wrong with it. I am guessing the KDP fell out but am not positive. The leak is showing at the front of the truck on the passengers side. It has covered his steering stabalizer. The fan blows the oil around so we can not pin point the leak. What should we look for and check? How much work is it to replace the dowell pin? If the KDP comes loose can it break the timing case cover and cause a big leak? Any help that you guys can give would be great. He needs to get his truck back up and running asap.

logskidder

It could be anything valve cover, timing cover, ect.....the best thing is to pressure wash the engine really well,blow dry with compressed air,grab a good light fire up the engine and find the leak. You could use dye and a black light but most of the time you dont have to.

CTD2001

We thought about doing the pressure wash thing, but it is so darn cold up here right now that the water will just freeze and we wont be able to dry it. We might just have to try it though.

1stGen545

Not to scare you but the KDP can crack the case. It could just be the front main seal like mine. You will need to pressure wash the engine like logskidder said. If you have to let the engine run a little bit and the heat from the engine will keep it from freezing.

wildmanben

pull the fan off so it doesnt blow the oil back. Makes finding the leak easier.

Dodge@KY1997

I have a front main seal leak, not going to worry about it though. At 409k I just keep adding oil...

CTD2001

Tomorrow night we are going to pressure wash the motor down and dry it in a buddies garage and see if we cant figure out where the leak is coming from. I hope for his sake that it is not something to serious.

mainer

more than likely the front main seal... but i'm not sure if it would leak that much that fast like that..


when the kdp goes... if it did he may have gotten lucky... almost sounds like kdp dropped out and was wedged between gear and case breaking the case which would explain sudden large amounts of oil.

mattbatson

Is the front seal a big job? Mine leaks a little...
If it isnt to much work, I may do it.

mainer

in order to replace the front seal you need to pull the timing cover..

this typically takes somewhere around 4hrs start to finish i believe.

also a good time to tab your KDP if it hasnt been done yet.

T-Bone

I thought I had a bad main seal. I washed the engine bay (I had oil everywhere!) and I discovered that a top bolt was loose on the timing cover. A 10mm wrench and a twist later, no more oil leak.

T-Bone

logskidder

Yep oil can come from anywhere, unless you clean everything up and see the leak...........Its just a shot in the dark

T-Bone

I hope you are as lucky as I was. DC quoted me over $2200.00. They wanted to replace almost every seal/gasket on the truck! Without cleaning the mess up, even Cummins thought it was a bad main seal. It was worth the effort to freeze my tail off and blow greasy stuff all over. My coveralls were a mess by the time I finished!

One other up shot, shortly after I fixed the leak I had to pull the starter. That top bolt sure was well lubed! lol

T-Bone

CTD2001

Well last night we got to cleaning off the front of the motor and then drying it up. we took the serpintine belt off so the fan would not spin. We started the truck and did not see anything at first, then I got in the truck and brought the RPMs up to about 1500 or so and he noticed oil starting to pool up. I have a picture of where the oil is coming from and pooling up and I have circled it with Red. It seems to me that the oil is leaking to far up on the motor for it to be a broken timing case/cover. Let me know if i am wrong. The picture is waiting to be approved in my gallery. Thanks for the help.

NHRedneck

i just looked at things and it looks to be in the right general area of the KDP....... it is def higher than i would figure, but i think your gonna want to tear off all the front end accy's and run the truck for a min so that you can really get in there to get a good look at things..... maybe your gonna be lucky and just have a gasket issue, but its a tough call from that pic. most crank seals drip/ leak more towards the bottom that they do from the top, and that one seems to be leaking alot from the top