~ My Brother recently picked up a '63 ford Econoline from a good friend of ours " The fuel line leaks and the one brakeline news to be replaced" Well, turnsout it needed a new fuel pump. The brakes needed to be completely rebuilt. My brothe has it running now, but oil in pouring out of the rear main. He has removed the rear seal cap and pulled out the rope seal. But he can't get the other half out! It's stuck! He doesn't want to drop the crank out! Any Ideas??? in won't budge.....Is there a trick to removing that old rope seal?
Screw a wood screw in the rope seal and pull like hell,sometimes rotating the engine will help.Make sure the screw doesn't hit the crank but goes in a ways and pull with vice grips.
A couple of ideas: Try using a dental pick to grab one end of the wick seal and push on the other end with a drift pin. The other idea is to loosen the 3 closest main bearing bolts, which will lower the crank enough to get the wick seal out. Once out, tie a piece of thread to one end and feed the wick seal around the crank. Tighten down the loosened bolts till the crank tightens up to the seal, then trim with a razor blade till flush. Then apply a small amount of gasket sealer such as black RTV to the ends of the wick seal. Do the same on the wick seal in the cap and replace the cap (oil up the bearing good when doing this or use ***embly lube). Break in the engine seal slowly at first, good luck
Or you can always do the "hack" fix.... take a punch and gently (dont mar the crank) tap the upper rope up to compress it... this will expand the upper rope to make it contact the crank again. Next take another small piece of new rope seal and fill the gap you just made and then replace the lower rope. I have done this many times in the old days and it generally works pretty well.
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