ok, I have it here with me now and took a look. it looks as though the seal is there and ok, I can see part of a rubber seal on the bend by the distributor, but it could have worked it's way inside farther twards the drivers side head, can't really tell, all I can see is some blue RTV. I suppose the seal could have worked it's way in under the thermostat housing or something, but I'm not too sure. </P>


when I looked I also noticed/remembered that there is oil on top of the intake manifold too, but I suppose that could just be from the turbulence from the fan pushing the oil back onto it since unless the oil's coming from the top of the distributor it couldn't have really got up there easily.</P>


another quick question, the temperature gage doesn't seem to work, can I test the gage by grounding the wire off of the temp sensor? or is that not how it works?</P>


oh, and would having a bunch of disconnected vacuum hoses be a bad thing? most of the hoses for the heating controlls are disconnected/rotted away, and we don't have the valve that goes to the heater core so the vacuum hoses for that are just hanging open.</P>


thanks</P>

 

O.K.-I concur with everyone else on the manifold leak. The distributor has an O-ring around the base that seals it to inside of the block, usually oil won't pass by it. It sounds like someone did a poor job of sealing the top half of the motor(intake gaskets,valve cover gaskets). As for temp sensor, I would just try to buy a new one(they're about 6-7 bucks) and if that doesn't work then test the guage itself. Replace the vacuum hoses and get a heater valve(provided you need it). If you don't need the heater(in Oregon I would suspect you do) then just cap-off the lines that are just hanging(of course this may affect engine performance).