Hi all,
First post !! May be a bit long but I'll try and make it as entertaining as possible!
My long endured desire to own a Lexus momentarily outweighed everything I know about buying a used motor and I've gone and bought a bit of a lemon!
It's a '94 GS300 with about 170,000 on the clock, which would be fine I suppose if it had been maintained properly (at all!) but it's got no service history and appears to have been maintained by an idiot. The oily muck on the bottom of the engine should have warned me off somewhat but the gentleman selling assured me it had just had an oil leak fixed (rocker covers he said) and it was advertised as 'perfect' so I took a chance... anyway, long story short when I got it home I found it leaking oil and water from all over the place. (Water pump, dip-stick hole, distributor, LPG regulator and from somewhere behind the timing belt)
Here's what I've done so far:
Replaced water pump gasket, easy job, bloody hard to get just just a gasket, made one myself in the end. Do you believe someone had actually refitted the water pump without fitting any gasket at all, how they expected that not to leak escapes me. Although he did the bolts up VERY tight, guess he thought that would be as good as a gasket.
Repaired water leak on LPG regulator, well, when I say repaired I encased the water connections with epoxy leak-fix, not ideal but will do for now and looking under the car while idling is longer reminiscent of Niagara Falls. On to the oil leaks...
Replaced cam shaft oil seals
Replaced dizzy o-ring and cap seal
Replaced dip-stick o-ring
Repaired various vacuum and gas lines (well, cut off the frayed ends and made good)
This is a good one... - Replaced crank pully bolt, unbelievably someone had prevously undone it with a an air chisel, and then NOT TIGHTENED IT BACK UP AT ALL! I was actually able to remove the bolt with just my fingers! Which as lucky as it had been mangled to point of not being able to get a socket on. The pulley must have been very loose (actually floppy) as it has scuffed up the lower timing belt cover! Counting my blessings on that one.
Replaced rotor arm which was eroded by about 2mm. Still need to replace the cap, spark plugs and some of the HT leads which have Ford written on them.
All this would be fine if I'd actually managed to fix the oil leak, it still seems to leaking oil from around the dip-stick area AND the dizzy. I'm getting oil pooling on top of the water pump and the dizzy heat shield (Yes, I realise that swapping out a rotor arm will not help with an oil leak!)
The engine seems to run fine, nice and strong, sounds ok, not burning any oil, but still throwing its oil out of every possible seal.
The poorly refitted crank pully has let me believe that crank front oil seal may have been replaced, possible very badly. Could this cause oil pressure problems? Can the oil-pressure relief valve actually fail?
I've ordered a crank-shaft front oil seal and will fit that when it turns up, probably this weekend so that'll be me pulling my engine apart on my birthday!
If anyone can suggest anything else I should look at I'd appreciate it.
All comments, suggestions and LOLs are welcomed.
Kindest regards,
Jules