Oil leak

[odjeep]

Well, I finally did it.

I put a rebuilt 258 in my 87' about a month ago. So far everything is fine so far except for a small oil leak. It would'nt bother me if it weren't for the fact that it gets on the exhaust. My first suspect was the rear main but i just replaced it with the rebuild while i had the engine out. My next suspect was the oil pan gasket which is still a good possibility but i noticed oil on the passenger side of the block by the coil and dist and that got me to a wondering, i know the dist is supposed to have a round gasket at the base which is never there in the first place or too torn up to reuse and just gets overlooked on the install. This engine was no different and didnt have a dist gasket, but could this be the oil leak that is blowing back the side of the engine? The oil only leaks when the engine is running. Thanks guys for any help.

od

 

[WV77CJ5]

I would try to put this gasket back on if I were you. Any automotive parts store can get it. It would be much easier to replace this than the oil pan gasket. It could possibly cause the leak after the rebuild if you cleaned up the block and it didn't have all of the paint on it for it to come as close to a seal as before. Also, these are very cheap gaskets so I would go ahead and buy it to see if it works. I put one on mine when I rebuilt my 258 and have no leaks at all from anywhere.