Over summer time I had my LT1 350 out of my 93 camaro turned into a 383 motor. Got it back, and had an oil leak coming from the crank shaft seal. Brought it back and they fixed it. Noticed the oil leak didn't go away. I just ordered complete front and rear suspension. Tubular k member, upper and lower control arms, etc etc. While installing that I wanted to get to the root of teh oil leak dilemma. Turns out the water pump drive seal was leaking and dripping down around the opti and back towards the crank shaft seal. Wasn't a major leak, but my opti was getting a bit too wet for my liking. I also had a bad water pump. I put 2 and 2 together and figured that my water pump being bad, wiped out the seal in the timing cover and thats my leak. So I changed all 3 seals in the timing cover along with a new timi9ng cover gasket and oil pan gasket obviously. Couple days went by and she was totally dry underneath until today when I put her back up on the lift. Looks like the same leak coming form the same spot, just not neartly as bad as it was before. I also noticed a bit of residue from the water pump weep hole. Sorry for the long thread but the whole point is that when I had teh timing cover off, I noticed the water pump has a smooth sleeve type piece that the seal appears to go around. And I also remember from tearing down a different LT1, that the water pump has a gear that I think is inside the block that you cant seeunless the intake manifold is off. Now, that sleeve that the water pump seal goes on, which is supposed to be smooth, seemed to have some ridges in it. COULD THOSE RIDGES BE WIPING OUT MY WATER PUMP DRIVE SEAL? COULD THE MACHINE SHOP HAVE BEEN SO STUPID AS TO REUSE THAT WHOLE UNIT? The reason why I think it is that unit that drives the water pump, is because the whole reason I had a crank shaft seal leak to begin with was because they reused my original hub and that hub had wear marks in it from 131k miles of use on it and the seal actually wore the metal away. And by them reusing the hub, caused the new seal not to seal correct.

I'm sorry for the long thread and sorry if this is in the wrong forum but a motor install and build for $9,300.00 SHOULD NOT SHOW ANY DAMN SIGN OF LEAK!!! ESPECIALLY ONLY 7,000 MILES IN!!!

Any insight would be great and recommendations also. I want to know what to say to the machine shop when I go ripping into their shop this week 'cuz I'm pretty fed up!

Sorry Fred if I'm one of the peopel posting in the wrong place!

THANKS ! GIOVANNI