[afarkas]

I just moved from high altitude to low altitude with my Procharged/Intercooled 90 LX. Also, I found an awesome mechanic who has fixed a multitude of sin from Denver's worthless lot of mechanics.

Unfortunately, on the test drive from the repairs, (she was running better than she ever has - I saw 11psi and only 6psi in Denver), smoke started spewing into the passenger compartment etc from underneath the car.

Upon closer inspection, she is leaking oil from a valve cover and the oil pan and possibly the rear main seal!

1st off, I'm told this happened because of high boost and high mileage and that the motor must be pulled to replace the oil pan gasket properly - circa $1000 labor.

1. Is it worth it to repair this on a high mileage motor or should I just save up big bucks and rebuild her?

2. Is there any way to strengthen these seals so this doesn't happen again?

3. Why is smoke flooding the passenger compartment from underneath the center console? The mechanic said that this was just a design flaw from Ford but this explains why I've been turning green from fumes for so long. How can this be fixed?

[oldguy]

Yikes! I can't hardly imagine getting the crankcase pressure high enough to start blowing things like an oilpan gasket. You would have to have something seriously wrong to do that. To get crankcase pressure that high you've got to be putting a huge amount of combustion pressure past the pistons and into the crankcase. Are you sure you haven't holed a piston?

There are some pretty knowledgable guys on here. Give it a day or two and see what they think. Then maybe consider getting a second mechanic to look at it.

Oldguy

[nestle_2000]

Perhaps the gasket is old and brittle from being 12 years old. Then having all that boost, and perhaps a crazy ring leak, that you can get that kind of pressure and have enough blowthrough to spew oil out of the gasket. That's pretty uncommon though, did your oil pressure gauge shoot high up there? Main seals are pretty common on our cars, you might be able to cheat and change the oil pan gasket without taking out the motor. You'd have to definetely jack the motor up as high as you can to drop it far enough down to replace the gasket. The main seal can be replaced when you take the transmission out. A leak from the valve cover gasket, means you have to remove the upper, or at least move it out of the way, then take off the valve cover and replace the gasket. Might as well do both sides while you're at it.

[nestle_2000]

Oh and having fumes come up the into the passenger compartment, did you change your shifter? If you did, sometimes people forget to put rubber boot/seal over the aftermarket shift. Sometimes it doesn't fit and has to be trimmed. I did that and I could smell some fumes when I ran over a bag and it stuck to my exhaust.

[afarkas]

Thanks for the info!

I didn't see the oil pressure as I was watching boost and fuel psi. I also wasn't driving when it happened. The car does have 140K however I've been pushing 6-8 psi intercooled boost for 20K of those miles w/o these issues. But, I've never pushed 10-11 psi before.

I'll have a compression check done.

And, no. My shifter/tranny are stock. I was very surprised to see just how much smoke came into the compartment. I was told that this was a design flaw by this mechanic, though that is really hard to believe.

Is that really the only place the smoke could come in?

[nestle_2000]

Unless you have a hole somewhere in your firewall, or someplace else...I can't see where it would come in. I've completely taken my car all apart all the way down to the metal. My dad thought I would never be able to make it run and be together again *HA*.