1badc4
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- Joined
- Jun 17, 2019
- Posts
- 282
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Not sure if this has been posted before I ran into this issue during the job of pulling the motor out of my suburban and putting it into my Tahoe I figured I'd replace all the gaskets why the motor is out, also an oil pump and a timing chain. Through my nephew who noticed a picture I post it of my gasket kit he said not to put the rear main seal in without either replacing the cover with a seal included or using an alignment tool so I did some research and found absolutely nothing to help me with the situation my nephew is a shop manager at a dealership not a Chevy dealership what has worked on plenty of them and mentioned that Chevy had changed the design of the rear main seal cover or as GM calls it retainer, show before I spent $90 on a new cover I did some research and found nothing online that speaks of the differences in the revised cover but not taking a chance worried about the seal leaking after putting the motor in I hated his advice and just bought the cover so I thought I'd share my experience, now I'm sure more savvy mechanics will probably say I could have just put the new seal in the old cover maybe so I wasn't willing to take the risk with what is involved in replacing it should it leak. The big difference is the new rear main seal is much thinner and if you put it in the original cover or retainer it will be in too deep and not ride on the crankshaft in the same spot as the original seal, the new cover and seal is designed for the thinner seal and will maintain the seal on the crank in the same location attached is some pictures of the two covers I could be overreacting but never dealing with a LS motor but plenty of gen 1 small blocks the $88 was just a piece of mind for me.