Mike69 other than the length of the seal, how much trouble was it to extract and replace the seal half in the block? I have a 71 340 thats leaking. Ive only done the replacement on an engine stand during a rebuild. Not on my back. Larry
It wasn’t too bad the second time when I knew what I was doing. Pulling the oil pan is 90% of the work. The hardest part was was raising the engine so the pan would clear the k member. Getting the motor mounts loose is a pain. I figured out you only needed to raise one side of the engine, but mine did not have a windage tray.
Disconnect the idler arm, pitman arm and one tie rod end and move the steering linkage out of the way. Pan comes off easy then.
Took off the rear main cap only. Didn’t have to loosen the others. Pushed the top half of the seal out with a toothbrush with the head cut off. Came out easy. I bought one of those seal extraction tools but couldn’t use it because the seals have a big metal rod in the center.
I bought the red viton seal at Oreilly. Yours will be a different one for a 340. Greased up the new one & it went back in easy.
I used permatex high tack sealer to hold the side gaskets on the oil pan. Put some rtv where the gaskets meet & slapped it back together.
If you were confident & humping, you could probably do it in a half day. Took me longer.
