New to nissans and turbos.

[sliploose]

Hello all. My name is Jeff. Nice to meet everyone. I am very very new to nissans and turbo cars. Please don't make too much fun of me. lol...Anyways...I need some advice. I recently purchased a 1993 Nissan 240sx with a sr20det motor. Its got a turbo...woohoo..my first turbo car! I am pretty excited. the motor seems to be in fantastic shape...very clean...recently rebuilt from top to bottom as told to me buy the guy I bought it from. I drove it for about three days...I put maybe 200 miles on it driving back and forth from Lumberton to fayetville nc about three times and taking it to Walmart and back a couple times. So after having it for about 5 days I was poking around looking at the motor and realized it was leaking a little fluid. I couldn't tell if it was oil or transmission fluid but I could see a little drip coming from the bell housing which scared the poop out of me. So...I am no mechanic..although I learn fast and am quite capable...I knew this was a little beyond me. I saw absolutely no leaks anywhere on the motor itself so I was pretty confident I didn't blow anything...I didn't beat on the car really at all. anyways...today I took the car to a mechanic and they got it on the lift and after a bunch of trying to figure out where this leak was coming from they finally figured out the screws on my greddy oil pan were stripped and oil was seeping out of the back of the pan. this was blowing oil all throughout the underside of the car. there is a tiny little plate on the front of the transmission and apparently it isn't sealed...its for inspecting the flywheel is what they told me...nice guys btw...they let me stay under the car with them the whole time. I learned a lot...so what was apparently happening was that little bit of oil was filling up inside the transmission and dripping out that little seepage hole right there on the bottom of the housing where the trans meets the block...great..transmission isn't bad..
as soon as I left the shop about three or 4 miles down the road my car started feeling like it wanted to stall. I would press on the gas and almost nothing happened...the motor would rev but the car took forever to come up to speed and it was sputtering and popping the whole time...WTF IS GOING ON! how did it run perfectly to the shop...on the dye drive...and then all of the sudden want to cut out and not come to speed....what could be causing this? a bad clutch? does a bad clutch cause the car to rev and not come to speed? I am at a loss cause I have already spent too much on this car...lol. I love it but I need to know where to start and what parts to start looking up...I smelled clutch the first few times I drove the car and also smelled gas too...there is also a fuel pump primer switch I have to turn on to start the car....it almost feels like the car isn't getting enough gas when I hit the pedal...it just takes forever to come to speed and its like its fighting itself...fuel pump? clutch? entire transmission? any help would be greatly appreciated...sorry for the long a** post and ill try to keep the rest much smaller...thank you everyone.

[gingerbredman]

Okay, so what I've gathered is that the leak at the oil pan is leaking into the bell housing, then exiting through there? It doesn't 'sound' like a lot of oil, and it would be odd if this is first time you're having problems with drivability. I'd imagine the centrifugal force of everything inside the bellhousing would keep stray oil at bay, but *hypothetically* if the leak were worse then perhaps that oil that been slung around could drip back down onto the flywheel and thus be causing slippage. Sounds like the clutch is slipping for sure, the clutch and flywheel are the only things linking the engine to the wheels and driving them, so my guess is that there's some oil in there. From my experience, I've never had a clutch just instantaneously give out, I've had a few slave cylinders take their leave, but that doesn't affect the clutch's actual performance.

Regarding the oil pan, if the bolts are stripped then it's a matter of getting new ones. However, if the holes are stripped they may have to drilled oversize and retapped for new, bigger bolts. Otherwise, I can say grey rtv has worked wonders for me. Never had anything get past it, though I wouldn't recommend rtv being the only thing holding the oil pan on haha