On my 89 Renix, the rear most cap that comes down in order to replace the rear main seal, seems to have a black rubber or plastic seal that fits into a groove in the cap. This is directly on the opposite side of where the lower main seal fits.

This black seal/gasket is pretty trashed, and I've seen zero mention of it in any guides on rear main seal replacement.

Does anyone happen to know what this is, if its important, and what the replacement is called or a part number?



Cheers

 

it looks like it just part of the pan gasket that didn't come off. Did it have a one piece pan gasket or 4 piece? That would be my guess.

 

Oil pan gasket

 

Peel it out and clean the groove.

Not only is that part of the old gasket (which will be replaced by the new one,) but someone screwed up installing it (it shouldn't have that "notch" in it.)

Strip it out, clean the groove, the rear rail on the new gasket will go in there.

 

Thanks all, I was pretty concerned this was a separate item. The rest of the oil pan gasket which I think was on there for 20+ years was paper like, while this was much more like brittle hard rubber.

 

For the longest, oil sump gaskets were installed in four pieces - two long cork rails down the sides (sometimes paper,) and two Viton ("rubber") rails at the ends.

Later engines use one-piece moulded rubber gaskets (Nitrile or Viton) that go all the way around - no gaps.

For us, use the 1996-up gasket - it's all most parts houses carry anyhow, it will fit on a 1987 (because I did that myself,) and it's easier to install in situ (the only times I didn't have to wrestle mightily with the old four-piece gasket was when I had the engine out on a stand, flipped upside down.)