"Brian D. Cain" wrote:
One more thing I wanted to add on this subject:
When doing both the front cover and oil pan/baffle plate installation during
an engine rebuild, alot of what I've personally discovered in helping
prevent
oil leaks from ever starting, besides the scotchbrite/brake cleaner trick,
is to
use a good, thick, and sticky assembly lube. I brought the subject up once
several months ago in a thread as it was related directly to this subject.
One
thing I found during older assembly jobs is that when I used a thinner,
drippy
assembly lube (or straight 30 weight engine oil) for the crank bearings and
bearing journals, I had problems preventing pan and front cover leaks. The
problem was when I was assembling the front cover and then the oil pan, I
would
have the engine tilted upside down. The oil/lube would we gravity-fed and
drip
out of the back of the rear main seal onto the gasketting surface of the
front cover
and/or the oil pan (when the engine was immediately flipped right-side up or
if
the oil pan was assembled w/ the engine right-side up).
My current procedure is:
- Use of high quality, tacky assembly lube (or baby-fresh scented
Vaseline/petroleum
jelly)
- Assemble front cover w/o paper gasket, using Permatex Ultra Black, with
engine
right-side up -> let stand for atleast 30 minutes (use this time to get a
snack)
- Assemble baffle plate/pickup tube/oil pan, using Permatex Ultra Black,
with engine
upside down -> let stand overnight
Just an FYI for you guys and another 2 cents of mine. Hope this helps.
B
I appreciate these tips Brian. My engine has had a small annoying oil
leak for the past year. I can't tell exactly where it's coming from but
seems to be somewhere in the front cover area. I run the engine on the
ground and can't see any leak, it only seems to happen in the air, maybe
because I can run higher RPM in the air. A friend just gave me a tip he
found on the internet, email below. I bought the little bottle of oil
dye from Napa, will try this soon.
Perry Mick
__________________________________________________________________________
Hello All
Thanks to those who answered my questions in the past about finding oil
leaks on my 0200 Vari-eze. I used the oil dye that you can get in a
little one ounce bottle from Napa auto parts. It looks like oil but
glows florescent yellow/green under a black light/ ultra violet light.
I got the black light fixture at ACE hardware.
I put the oil dye in the with a half qt. of oil to wash it down and
took her out for a flight to get some oil flowing and then back to the
hanger.
I waited until after sun set to try out the black light as it needs
to be dark in the hanger to show up. The dye showed my oil leaks
fantastically. I needed a definite indication of the leak as the fix
was not that eze.
It was coming out of cylinder base. I suspected the cylinder base but
the dye was the proof I needed. Nothing would be worse than to
replace or redo something on your engine that did not need fixing.
How I fixed it was to take off the enough parts (head pipes, intake
pipes, baffle and spark plug.) so that I could loosen up all the
cylinder nuts on the suspected cylinder. Making sure the piston was at
top dead center first than I loosened the nuts so that I had about an
1/8" to 3/16" gap between the cylinder base and the crank case.
I got a mirror and a flash light and checked out the O-ring. The areas
that I could see looked fine. I could not see all the way around as
some baffles were still in the way a little.
I than got a can of the STP carb cleaner, the kind that smells like
freon or computer cleaner and cleaned all around the base of the
cylinder. Maybe a little may have leaked back down inside the case but
it was a small amount. After that I put a bead of the copper color RTV
in there all the way around the base and torqued the cylinder bolts
back down. I got a lot of RTV in there and a lot oosed out when it
tightened it back down. I just wiped off what I could to clean it up a
little
I have made ten flights with a total of ten hours now and the leak is
stopped for now. MY eze is the most leak free that its ever been.
Just wanted to pass the dye trick along to the group. It was mentioned
to me once a long time ago and then just a few weeks back another time
and then I finally tried it with great success.
I told Tim Lo Dolche up at Lake Taho about it a couple days and and he
found and fixed three pesky leaks too.
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