Rear main seal leak turns into a head scratcher

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Trollhole

Trollhole

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Unknown history on this 97 40th we have at the shop. 270k. Inspection with borescope showed rear main leak. Removal of trans showed a very different yet puzzling set of issues. Upper pan is cracked in several places where it meets bell housing bolts some cracks have been welded back and ground somewhat flat. Torque converter alignment knob snapped off. Torque converter looks relatively new but wrong (edit: correct converter). Flex plate torque converter mounting holes are egged. Biggest head scratcher is how hot the spacer ring between the crank and the ring got. Only thing I can think of is they forgot to install the crank bolts. And they forced the trans on the bell housing. And the trans tried to fall out when they removed all but the bottom two bolts. What was supposed to be an easy crank seal and trans input seal has turned into some serious ****ery.

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More pics. You can see how hot that spacer ring got and how many attempts they made trying to stab the trans in and bashing the alignment pins up against the bell housing.
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Think maybe the last guy tried to stab the trans without the TC fully seated? I could see them trying to use the bellhousing bolts to "draw down" the trans and causing that. And if they didn't install the TC to flexplate bolts in the right order the TC would be off center and break off the snout and perhaps contribute to the discoloring of the spacer.

What is more amazing is that (I assume) this drove itself to the shop?
 
reklund5 said:
Think maybe the last guy tried to stab the trans without the TC fully seated? I could see them trying to use the bellhousing bolts to "draw down" the trans and causing that. And if they didn't install the TC to flexplate bolts in the right order the TC would be off center and break off the snout and perhaps contribute to the discoloring of the spacer.

What is more amazing is that (I assume) this drove itself to the shop?
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Yes. It did have a blown head gasket but it was just starting to fail on #6. It did have what I thought was a miss. Which was probably the torque converter out of balance. The snout had some grinding done to it as well.
 
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