Hey guys, Chris again from ClassicVWBugs dot com and here we have a 1959 Beetle that I am restoring up back together. And I am getting a lot of questions about oil leaks and such. I know a lot of Volkswagens are known for leaving their spot so they say, and we are to get underneath the car right now, and I am going to show you some of the common areas where the oil drips from, and I can point out to you exactly what that means and where it's coming from. Okay, so here we are underneath the Bug, and what I wanted to point out is we always like to jack our cars up by the horseshoe there so at least the stands in the jack is out of the way when we come underneath the car. So what we want to do is get yourself a dirty rag, wipe everything down first, few minutes later come back and check where the oil was dripping from. Common areas, of course, will be here; okay these little nuts on the oil strainer are loose. Sometimes there is no washers in there, and what you want to do is you want to get in there, and tighten them down a little bit but do not go too tight because if you go too tight, those things can break right off so when you use a ratchet, I will put it on here, it's a 10 mm, with this as it's on there, just wrist tight, hold the ratchet up high or you could buy one of these, these little palm ratchets, and tighten it that way. You do not want to use much force from the handle because you will wind up breaking those off.
Also check the center nut as well. Some strainers don't have this. If it's still leaking, you can go ahead and tight them down, it's a good indication that the gas kits are gone. So, next time you take this down, do an oil change, put new gas kits in, get new washers, and what not, and tighten that up. Another common area is right here you will see drips. If you see drips here, it's a good indication that your rear main seal on your engine is leaking. What does that mean? You are going to have to pull your engine. Here is the seal you have to buy. It's a circular seal, if you see I can show you here what it looks like, comes in a baggy like - this is the rear main seal. Okay, they are only couple of bucks.
You are going to have to pull the engine out and take off the flywheel. So take off the clutch, the pressure plate, and the flywheel, and that rear main seal is there, you pull that out, and you have got to out another one in.
Okay here is the back part of the engine here that I said that leaks often, is the rear main seal area, here is the flywheel, here is that big nut you would have to take off to get to the rear main seal that's on the engine. Like I said, this is the area where on the back nut it starts to drip. And you see right above it, of course, is the rear main seal area.
You have got to get yourself a 36 mm heavy duty socket with a breaker bar, and you are going to have to put that on the back nut, but, you also are going to have to get a tool like this, and mount it to the back part of the engine here, and grab the teeth of the flywheel so you have leverage to loosen that nut. If you don't have this tool or something similar to it, it's going to be real tough to get that nut off. And you are going to need like an end of way, a jack handle to go over the breaker bar, okay, to give yourself some leverage so you can loosen it up.
Once you have pulled that off, you will see the rear main seal and then if it's leaking below it, you will know that it needs to be changed. Also while you have that off, there is a flywheel seal that goes inside the flywheel, looks a little O ring, goes inside this flywheel, you are going to want to change that too, I mean, you have it out, you might as well change it. So just check those areas, another way you can also check if the rear main seal is leaking, if you don't want to take the flywheel off is put oil into the engine and then what you could do is tilt, put the engine back on a slant, and see if it's leaking. Over a few minutes you will know if it's - if the rear main seal is leaking. If, when that engine is tilted, you will realize then it's going to need to be changed.
Another common areas that we back up here, start to see oil here, check your pushrod tubes, pushrod tubes, I think you see this right up here, right in here this area, sometimes those leak on the ends where the seals are. Okay, where they meet the head, right over here, onto this side, there is also rubber seals in there.
They do sell kits today that are spring-loaded, that you do not have to pull the engine out to put those in, but we always like to pull our engine out, and put new pushrods in that I have a stock, looking at I haven't heard many good things about the spring-loaded. They don't last very long but just recently in VolksWorld magazine, they had new spring-loaded pushrod tubes that are really heavy duty and really good to work with, so that might work as well.
If you also see that there is no oil from the pushrod tubes, and you see oil down here, sometimes, it's oil dripping from the oil cooler up above. There is little round seals that go on the oil cooler, on the bottom of it, on the base of it. And that's another engine pull, so you are going to have to pull the engine to do that.
Okay so here you see the fan shroud off of the engine, it's there, I took the shroud off the engine right there. Here is your oil cooler, right here, and what you are going to want to do is to check and see if there is leaks. You are going to want to unbolt this. There is a nut here, looks like a 10 mm and take that off and then take the oil cooler off and then you will see two spots there that meet those little donuts, see those to go on. Just check around here and see if it's leaking or not. You will tell if it's leaking like I said when I was underneath the car and when I showed you if it's leaking on this side of the engine, down on the pushrod tubes, this is the area where there oil cooler sits, there is a good chance that I miss out of the engine and see if it leaks, it could be this.
I have ordered here an engine seal kit, I usually get these every time I pull the engine out of the car because we like to change all the seals in the gas kits and what not. And these are what like - kind of way your oil seals, oil cooler seals would look like, some are different, these look more like the 1600, 1300, maybe 1500 seals, these are actually a little bit different than the other ones that I have just had. And then some of the earlier ones on the 1200 engines have got more of this donut type seals here. But anyways, I always buy these kits; it's just always great whenever you have the engine out of the car, just change all the seals and the gas kits.
Sometimes you see oil dripping here along the bottom of the heat box. Sometimes that's a good indication that your valve cover gas kits are leaking. I am going to take the valve cover off, you pull this down. One little tip that I have learnt, at one point in east down, a lot of people would use a screwdriver to pull this down. Actually I have learnt from an old German mechanic that I used to speak to. He would use an old rag and slip it in the hole here, and pull it and that's what pulls the clip off there. But check your valve cover gas kits inside here and then make sure you use like a Permatex to seal that valve cover in place so it sticks nice and good in there. So that's an other area that oil usually leaks from.
Okay, so this is just a few pointers to look out for when you find that oil is dripping on your bug. It's really common for the Volkswagens to drip. There is even a few times where we did pull the engine, and I would put a new rear main seal in, and we are still getting the drip by the back nut, there by the strainer. But just keep an eye out; these are the common areas that are usually at faulty with the bugs. So check your strainer again, check that back nut, check your oil cooler seals that are above the pushrod tubes, and check your valve cover gas kits because that's usually the areas where the bug is always leaving his mark, as they say. Alright, if you got any questions, chris@classicvwbugs.com or you can visit my web site www.classicvwbugs.com.
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