New World Datsuns...

I took my son and his buddy while my wife handed candy out at home. We walked 3 streets of garden homes in one neighborhood in about 2 hours and those little knotheads had about 6-8 pounds of candy each. When we got back home I implemented the dad tax.

My doorbell didn't ring once.

I live in an area where the houses/duplexes are packed tight, my house is 5 feet from the property line on the east side and 7 feet from the property line on the west side, all the houses around here except corner lots are like this, it's not far from one house to the next, I had at least 30 kids with their parents last year, not a living soul this year, I even went out to the main road where I could see at least 5 blocks in either direction and seen no one.
That is a first for me, times have changed, not sure if it's for the better, the neighbor across the street even decorated a little, and there were no kids to see it.
When I was a kid(16 years old) if I stood out in the street and looked down the road both ways I could see a hundred or more kids just after dark.

Well I lifted it up and cleaned everything in the leak area, then started the car and ran it for a while, shut it down and crawled under it and looked for leaks, this is what I found.



See the wet cotter key sticking out the the drain hole for the clutch cover area, I am thinking rear seal.

Well that's inconvenient. Two piece through the pan or one piece behind the flywheel?

From what I have found searching the issue it is a one piece seal and it can be done while the engine is in the car, but it is RHD and there is a lot of stuff in the way, I just don't see it happening.



I will drop the car and drive it and use a mirror to make sure that the rear seal is the issue as I can run it for several minutes up in the air going thru the gears and everything and I barely get anything out of that small hole, but when I drive it on the road it is pouring out after I shut it down, I want to see it pouring out that hole before I start tearing into the engine or tearing the engine out, this is too large of a leak to sell it that way unless I sell it for way less money(thousands less), I will drive it tomorrow to confirm what I think it might be.
BTW I already checked the clutch reservoir and it is not leaking/the issue.
I suspect if I had been driving it even once a month I would not have this issue.

How is the breather setup on that engine? Is it possible that it only leaks after driving because the road load builds enough crankcase pressure (blow-by) that it is pushing past the weakest seal?

Wouldn't that be an easy fix, but I seriously doubt I could be that lucky, but I will look at the breather cap anyway, the whole engine compartment has a film of dirt on everything, but it is not worse around the cap, but that could work either way.

Well the engine doesn't appear to have any blow-by while running in the garage, I revved it up without the oil filler cap on and nothing came out of that hole, the cap vent is clear but it only has a small hole in the bottom middle center and 2 small holes on the sides of the cap to let it vent above the valve cover, them holes are not very big and would not let much air out if there is blow-by under load.
OK, I found the crank breather, not much appears to be coming out of it either, but this is while running in the driveway not under load, I am going to the post office in a little while, I will drive it and see where it leaks for sure when I get home.

OK, I am not sure how this stuff works, here is a photo of the crank case breather that I removed , at least that is what the search I did said, I checked it for air flow both ways and it is fine, before I cleaned it everything was bone dry on the exit, see how it is too the right of the clutch cover mounted to the block, this crank case breather appears to be right over the flywheel.



OK, that cotter key/hole the oil is coming out of appears to be in the same exact place on the bottom, it's like the vent is for the clutch cover rather than for the engine/block, When I looked at the hole/cotter key where it is leaking I noticed it is also leaking out between the bottom of the starter and the block, but not near as bad.

I guess I need to see the back of a Mini Cooper 1275 engine block to understand what is going on.

Well it turned out that the breather in the photo in my last post is not the engine case breather/vent, that is for the clutch area like I mentioned.
The guy I talked to said my engine crank case breather/vent was below the alternator where the fuel pump would be on an older vehicle, well my fuel pump is not there, it is on the other side of the engine, I can see no engine crank case breather/vent on this engine, he also said crank seal failures were common.
He let me borrow a 1969 thru 2000 manual for the Mini, that will likely help, he also said I was going to need a special flywheel puller that I do not have, I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Sounds like you'll be busy for the next couple days.

I will not be taking this apart right now, I will look at it for a little while and decide what to do and how I will do it, I still have a small amount of work to do this coming week, mostly treating roofs and cleaning out gutters, since it has not rained in a while the gutters are dry and I can clean them out with an air blower for the most part, when it starts raining I will do this rear seal.

Well I read about how to remove the Mini engine, so i spent a couple hours removing the grill and stuff off the engine, but still have a long way to go.





I did remove the oil cooler and I put back the stock line, I figure I will sell it without the oil cooler as it was jury rigged in with adapters that looked goofy, to this day I cannot figure out why they didn't sell me a oil cooler with the proper fittings.

I am not sure I am going to be able to get the engine out of this car without pulling the whole front end out of the car, I cannot figure out if I can remove the axles without removing the complete front wheel assemblies off both sides, I have searched it and not one video shows anyone separating the yokes from the trans-axle without talking about removing control arms/tierods, what a nightmare.
I might put it back together and get some estimates, and if they are to expensive I may have to sell it and take a big loss.

Don't these have some zany hydraulic suspension?

Do you have access to a FSM? That should spell out the R&R procedure for the engine.

I do have a manual and it keeps talking about removing front suspension parts, but the problem is that these search results keep leading me to text results instead of text with photos, one has to know what the parts are that they keep referring to to understand what they are talking about, if they had photos I could likely figure it out.
I need a special tool, and it would help if one of the results showed a way to just remove the engine instead of taking the whole front end apart, it is possible because it has been mentioned a few times, but no step by step with photos, even the manual sucks, small photos that I cannot see any detail, I will look at it more tomorrow, I can likely make a the tool needed to separate the yokes from the trans-axle as there was a short video showing what it looked like and how to use it, but the engine was already out and separated at the CV joint, and the guy showed how to remove the yoke, but the text I have read keeps mentioning that if you remove the yokes the CV joint can fall apart because it is loose meaning that when installed it cannot fall apart, but again no photos and parts being named that I have no idea what they are, they even mentioned that the big ball bearings in the CV joints are specific to the position they are in and not to get them mixed up.
The manual keeps referring to other procedures that need to be done in the engine removal procedure of which one is to remove the bump stops and replace them with a piece of wood the same thickness, again taking more of the front end apart.
I just feel like cutting the axles out and replacing them when I understand how they work and what to do, all I want to do is remove the engine and it appears I have to take the whole front end apart, suspension, engine, cooling system, oil cooling, cowl parts, the manual even mention removing the whole exhaust system front to rear, it may be a cool looking car, but this thing sucks to work on.
I would rather work on a Datsun, at least I can see where I am going and where the end is, this is like walking around with my eyes closed and my arms outstretched, and I don't know what new thing my shin is going to hit next.

DRIVEN wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 5:41 pm Don't these have some zany hydraulic suspension?

I don't know what all makes up the suspension, but I do know that this big tear drop shaped piece of rubber is the coil spring, it has a cone on the top and a bowl on the bottom as I recall, and that piece of rubber is in the middle of them.

I finally read an engine removal article that doesn't require the removal of front suspension parts, but I will need to make a tool to separate the axles from the gear box(trans-axle), it is basically a "C" shaped wedge that one pounds in between the trans-axle case and the yoke that slides into the case, they are held in by a snap ring, unfortunately other places/forums no not post a lot of photos or descriptions of these items/tools or photos of step by step procedures on removing engines in the Mini, they just like typing I guess, I will not be any better, I would rather just remove it, replace the rear seal, clean everything up which I will take my time doing as I want the engine compartment to look good, and then put it back together without screwing anything up, it may not look like one can eat off the engine, but they will not get greasy/oily touching it.