oil leak

[jmattox]

I have had good luck with this area before, so, I'll try again. This weekend at Daytona, beautiful weather 6 vees 3.7 miles of soon to be repaved track but that is another topic, we had an issue with the clamp on the distributor not holding the distrib in time. Kept going out of time and causing really lousy HP. Harry gave us a bolt that fit and worked. Thanks, Harry. Sunday I went out after Shawn's weekend was blown. 4 laps in I was shown a meatball and I saw in the mirrors the heavy oil smoke trail out of the right side of engine. Can't remember when I saw it, I just remember the smoke and the meatball. Pulled off at turn 6 and drove back to paddock from there. Sebring is 4 weeks away and the weather will still be about as good. What I am asking is any ideas as to what the oil leak might have been. I suspect in no particular order: 1) distributor o-ring defective, 2) oil filter on oil block bad seal, 3) valve cover gasket not seated. I will listen to the voice of experience and suffer in silence at the chuckles.

John
fv42

[brp]

John,

Several possibilities.
1) Valve cover gasket leak. Should be easy to spot when you remove the valve cover. The gasket will be 'loose' in a spot and no longer glued to the valve cover. The gasket would also likely be sticking up up a little bit and slightly deformed.
2) You may have a broken head stud. Need to pull off the valve cover (as in #1 above). Look at and use a screwdriver to try to move each of the four head studs inside the valve cover. If one broke, the nut and washer may already be off and laying inside the rocker arm box. If any of the four move with just a slight push, then you have a broken stud. Usually the broken head studs can be replaced without having to remove the cylinder head or disassemble the engine. Contact your engine builder for advice/assistance.
3) Oil cooler / oil cooler block / oil filter. Any of these should be readily noticable because of all the oil around them on the top of the engine. If you didn't blow up the motor, clean off everything well (brake clean works well), re-fill your oil, and start the engine up again...you should be able to see the leak.
4) Distributor o-ring. I think this is a slight possibility. The oil is not under pressure to the distributor. It only gets lubricated by splashing.

Hope this helps,
Mike Beaumia

[jmattox]

Thanks, Mike. Will start on some of your suggested leads this afternoon.

John
fv42

[brian]

Mike's right on wih his ideas. Most folks way over tighten the pinch bolt on the distributors. Many of the engines I see in the shop have bent bolts from overtightening. Remember, it's only needs to be tight enough to keep from moving. There are variation in the brackets themselves and some won't fit correctly. Make sure the dist. is seated firmly on top of the case after tightening the stud that holds the dist. to the case. There may be gaps in the bracket or dist. that will lead to minor leaks. Sometimes bending the L shape on the bracket will seat the dist.

[SR Racing]

If you were oiling enough to get a meat ball, (from one side only) It certainly was either the valve cover gasket or broken head stud. (It is conceivable it was something up above the top of the engine but you should be able to spot that.)

Jim

[jmattox]

Thanks to all. I think the leak has been found. Filled crankcase up with oil and cranked up engine. Valve cover gasket was leaking like a sieve. Will seal the gaskets to the VC's and try again. Thanks for not laughing!

[billinstuart]

All valve cover bails are not the same. Some of the replacement ones have inadequate tension to hold the valve cover tight. I never changed gaskets, and had an original set of bails that were bent for additional clamping force.

[hardingfv32-1]

There is a little more to the valve cover gasket than meets the eye.

1) The gasket is generally under size. To correct this, stretch them over the OUTSIDE of the valve cover over night.

2) You want to bond the gasket to the valve cover ONLY, using a RTV or door molding adhesive. Sand and clean the valve cover before bonding. Use a film of oil on the surface that comes in contact with the head for easy removal of the valve cover assembly.

As Bill stated, you really never need to replace a well prepared valve cover gasket.

Brian

[FV80]

I generally use GREASE on my gaskets on the mate surface to the head. Cork gaskets are the best, I've found, but you have to get some that FIT. Some that I've had were so dried out that they had shrunk and wouldn't fill the valve cover 'place' for the gasket. No matter what you do then... it won't work. If you manually 'lay it in' and it has adequate length to fill the space, you're good. If it pulls away from the corners, I toss 'em. Brian says you can stretch them .. I've never tried that.

Also - when I put on new gaskets (seldom), if at all possible, I'll RTV them into the cover, then set them on a spare head overnight to dry - with a little weight to help keep in place. Once it has set overnight, you can do pretty much anything with them... as long as you use lubricant (grease preferred) on the mating surface to the head.

Steve

[pillowmeto]

I have seen instances where a valve adjuster nut comes loose causing the adjuster to back out. The adjuster eventually hits the valve cover and pushes it up and crooked. It will look like it is on straight, but leak as if it is not even on the engine.

Normally, gaskets like those do not just fail all of a sudden and begin to leak a large amount.

[remmers]

silly as it sounds, i've been meatballed for overfilling the engine with oil. it went into the overflow container and then splashed out in right handers only