Oh crap, belt broke, or so i thought.

Noticed that the engine spun up a little quicker when the light was on.

Hmm... Hurried home.

Pulled in the driveway, and looked under the car and it's burping oil all over the place!!

Crap, pull it in the garage and shut it down. Let it cool.

Opened the deck lid and checked the burp box to see if maybe it was overflowing or something. Nope.

Put her up in the air, pulled off the tin by the alternator, and checked the belt. Still there. Hmm...

Run my hand along the belt. To the fan, and the fan is moving fore and aft. Belt still on.



At this point I am not sure what the issue is, so I start the process to drop the motor. Pull the carbs, disconnect linkage, yada yada....

Plan is to drop the motor and pull the tin and take a closer look.

Anyone have this happen before? What was it? What should I be on the lookout for?

I assume I will replace the front main seal, the oil pump seal and the oil cooler seals while I am in there, but anything else I should be looking for?

Please let me know.

TIA

Sounds like the fan bolt has came loose, woodruf key fellout, and fan is spinning

bummer capt..... i hate that sinking feeling when something like that happens. i have a couple questions. do you think oil got on the fan belt and is slipping on the alternator?

before you drop the engine you should try to isolate the leak. i know its a pia but it has to be done either way. baby powder works well especially if your oil is clean and hard to see.

seals are cheap so im with you on replaceing them while your in there. but you still need to find out where the leak is coming from. that would suck to go thru all this hassel of cleaning and replacing seals and not actually fix the leak. if the oil pump is not leaking i think i would leave it alone.

and for sure it was the alt light and not the oil light?

Was too hard to see where the leak was coming from with the engine in the car, so it needs to come out. I am hoping the leak source will be obvious, but we'll see.

I was hoping that it was only oil on the fan belt, but it felt dry to me, so I don't think that was the issue.

Going to drop the engine this week and go from there. Going to do a few "while you're in there" jobs on the engine bay too.

If the fan hub came off the crank, the hub won't be inside the front crank seal. That's your oil leak. Hopefully it didn't ruin the end of the crank. The hub may be toast.

When this happened to me, the fan bolt had backed out completely (never be found again). The fan was off the hub completely as well. Which was a good thing as it did not mar the crank end at all. Trashed crank end or destroyed slot for the woodruff key = full tear down/new crank. Here's to hoping it is an easy fix for you as mine was.

Hmmmm......for sure--another "Whodunit" puzzler.....

You say the fan is moving fore and aft....like it's not solidly bolted to the crank? Or do you mean easy to rotate a bit?
(I've had my fan work loose, shear the roll pin that locates it & wobble due to the 3 retaining bolts getting loose but the hub was still firmly attached to the crank.)
Sounds more like your hub bolt has come loose enough to shear the woodruff key & allow oil seal to seep via wobbling....
Hope the nose of your crank isn't buggered....

I have spent the weekend fixing the car.

The woodruff key on the crank was oddly small. I had a spare on another engine and swapped it in.

I replaced the front main seal, the oil cooler seals and the alternator belt. I will be putting her back together today.

So was it the woodruf key or?

I replaced the woodruff key and the fan hub. The woodruff kay that was there seemed really small. It might have been beaten up or worn down some how.

The fan hub showed some wear near the grove for the woodruff key. So I swapped it out too.

The bolt that holds the fan was off, so that was certainly part of the problem.

I plan to keep my eye on it.