Rear main vs tranny input seal leak

[Texasdoc]

No luck. Got it all back together. Let it run for a few minutes. No oil leaks. Great. Went and filled up with gas, then back home and noted quite a bit of oil. Same place - between bell housing and engine plate. So it definately has something to do with being hot.

I had put the dye in so I looked and found oil at the front of the bell housing, back of the oil pan, along the sides of the oil pan, the oil pan cork gasket in the front was stained yellow, the top of the timing cover gasket was wet with oil, there was some oil pooled in the valleys on the top of the timing cover, and oil at the base of the distributor.

There was no oil on the china walls - front or rear. No oil leaks out of the cylinder heads, valve covers, or intake that I could find. I DID notice that the oil dipstick had popped out.

I'm thinking this may be a crankcase pressure issue, although I'm not sure why. I have a new PCV, plumbed directly into the port on the base of the throttle body. A filtered breather on the other valve cover. The PCV valve rattles when shaken, and I can suck air thru it when disconnected.

So I took everything off the valve covers, plugged the PCV port on the throttle body, and started the car. After about 7-8 minutes, it started dripping oil again at the bottom of the bell housing. I didn't run it much longer to see if it was better or worse without the PCV system installed. I did notice some steam/oil vapor/mist coming up out of both valve covers when the engine was hot.

The engine has less than 200 miles on it. I assembled it myself. I double checked all rings when installing. Not upside down. I checked the gaps on all the top and middle rings for every piston.

I wanted to try a different PCV valve. There are lots of people complaining about "which one do I use for my engine" but absolutely ZERO answers to these questions. About 50% of them are labeled with an A thru F, but nobody knows (or nobody is saying) what those codes mean. Probably the flow rate and spring strength but again, there is no chart that says if you have this size engine with this much vacuum at idle, use this PCV valve. :frustrated: So, even if I switch to a double breather setup, deleting the PCV system, I will still have a leak.

I'm going to do a compression test, then replace the oil pan gasket. I don't want to replace the timing cover gasket. It is wet, but there is no oil dripping from the front of the engine. This may just be a leak from the pressure. I don't want to replce the RMS again (just did that) but if I already have the oil pan off, its not a ton more work. (Can I do it without removing the trans and bellhousing?)

Just a thought: could it be the high volume oil pump? On the last motor, I had a normal volume pump. If the high volume pump is pushing more oil up to the heads, filling up the oil passages that drain the heads, maybe the crankcase pressure cannot escape thru the valve covers, and build up, leaking past the RMS, oil pan, dipstick, etc. Doesn't seem likely since lots of people use HV pumps without the problem.