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pennsoil and bad rear main seal?

posted by  someone claiming to be claude on  Mon Nov 18 13:16 CST 2002 [RELATED]

after 252,000 miles, I finally tried a motor oil other than my trusty dino grade Castrol. At a Volvo parts manager's recommendation, I tried Pennsoil (also straight dino oil) for kicks, and lo and behold 500 miles later, my rear main seal opens up! I know I'm not talking fancy oils here and don't want to hear from every Amsoil dealer that I should be using Synthetic anyway, but I am wondering 2 things:
1. could there be a correlation between swapping oils and the seal going bad? or is it simply coincidence and long overdue anyway?
2. How long do the leaks typically last before going catastrophic? I'd like to drive it about 2 hrs to a trusted dealer for the operation which will include the first clutch in this car's life.

thanks for any input,
claude
'94 855M 252,000 miles (orig. owner)
original clutch, exhaust, alt. etc.







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    pennsoil and bad rear main seal?

    posted by  pablos on  Mon Nov 18 15:09 CST 2002
    Author: [PROFILE] [EVERY POST] [THREADS] [BEST POSTS] RSS Feed     [IGNORE ALL POSTS]
    last visit: Tue May 22 00:43 CST 2001
    [RELATED]

    1) yes but your car would have started to leak oil eventually in a month or three

    2)I would say you could do the drive IF your flame trap is clear and there is no excess crankcase pressure and you check the oil every few miles (ok every 50 miles or something)


    Good to know you got a good life out of your clutch! Mine has 190K miles, yay!
    --
    http://www.fidalgo.net/~brook4/oilslubesfilters.html








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    pennsoil and bad rear main seal?

    posted by  russb on  Mon Nov 18 14:17 CST 2002
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    last visit: Fri Dec 15 10:05 CST 2000
    [RELATED]

    I really don't care to speculate if the oil had any bearing on the seal failure, but after 252,000 miles why the heck would you change brands? If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is!
    --
    RussB in Ct '96 855T - '91 944T








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      pennsoil and bad rear main seal?

      posted by  someone claiming to be claude on  Tue Nov 19 02:16 CST 2002 [RELATED]

      a good question and one I have asked myself as well, but the reason I tried pennsoil was the fact that the service manager said it would likely help cure my noisy lifters as it had "better properties" than Castrol in that respect. Crock of S*** probably, but I figured with so many miles on the car, it wasn;t a big risk. Oh well, the seal was bound to fail sooner or later, I'm just bummed I won't have truly discovered how long a clutch can last, as I will change it once the gearbox is split from the engine.







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