Mystery oil leak

[sverker]

The oil cooler is not in the radiator on these, it's on the oil filter mount. Without the heat it could very well be that the pressure helped to keep the crack closed until the right conditions occur.

Merc, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with two rebuilt engines failing immediately. Maybe it was because you were ment to keep the original engine . Sometimes there are nothing else to do than to laugh at it when things goes too crazy..

Hopefully I'll be able to start rebuilding my engine soon now that we have better temperatures and then I'm certain that I'll be back with questions.

Please keep us up to date on the progress with your engine

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note using Tapatalk

[merc81]

Yes, sverker, I am telling myself exactly that--this is simply a lesson I needed to learn so that next time I might put more thought into the problem before I jump to the far conclusion. You surly nailed this problem dead on last month. I should have listened better.

I confess that because it was a rebuilt engine I suspected it all along. I reasoned (to myself) that perhaps the rebulder simply patched up some old block he aquired and made it work long enough to unload even though he knew the block had problems. I'm not sure why I felt this way--it was completely wrong headed and I should have explored that oil cooler in more detail.

The very first thing I did after testing the transmission lines was to pull the engine and replace the timing cover seals. I pressure tested the engine at that time at 20psi and of course it held just fine. Next I pulled the engine again and even though I knew better, I took the heads off and replaced the gaskets--another costly guess that I knew was wrong. Lastly, I pulled the heads again and took them to rebuilder for testing. When they tested fine, I bought an engine.
It was just huge bad luck that the engines I bought were junk--or good luck depends how you see it--at least I don't own either of them any more. And it turns out that my first engine was rebuilt by HESCO, a group that now pretty much builds high performance engines only. Maybe that's why my old engine has 210 psi and the new ones only had 175.
I look at it now as experience. I know I'm the best engine installer anywhere around my area for these vans. After all, I've had that thing in and out more than half a dozen times since New Years. At first it took me a day to remove the engine, now its just over one hour and the engine is sitting free on my floor. Anyone need an engine swap? Come on over, BYOE (bring your own engine).

[merc81]

Its been a couple days and I'm still assembling the original engine. I had a problem this afternoon with #6 intake valve; I stripped out the roller rocker post scew...


Went to the store and purchased a 7/16-14 bolt and tap and rethreaded the hole in the head. Then I discovered the roller rocker was perfectly sized for the old bolt and I had to drill down through those parts too so my oversized bolt would fit. Last step then was to make a shoulder washer from a nut by drilling it out and using a dremel tool to fit it down in the rocker arm. I'll post a couple photos when I get back to work. I was able get the right torque on the bolt after all that effort, but it cost me most of the afternoon and I'm not sure if I'll have the van running before the weekend now.

Heads and intake manifold are all assembled and I'm letting it dry till Sunday.
..

[sverker]

Similar happened to me, in my case it was due to a faulty torque wrench.. Later we concluded that it was probably wrongly made for ft lbs instead of inch lbs, amazinly enough only one post hole stripped although all was torqued with that wrench..

I used a timesert insert, this is a picture of the set:


First the hole had to be drilled up with the included drill, then new threds cut:


I had put on a piece of tape to get to the depth that I had messured. It wasn't possible to use the included counterbore since the insert has to go below the line but I messured it and used a correct size drill instead. Then the insert would be installed with the provided tool, which screws it to the right position then expand it to make it stuck in the hole. There was a twist that the install tool couldn't go deep enough so I used a standard M10 bolt to make it expand a little more then used a M10 tap to adjust the threads to the right toleranse to get the right torque later on.

Then I started to install the rocker, USING THE SAME FAULTY TORQUE WRENCH!!!! The result was that the insert came out, bringing the new threads with it!!!

That was when I started to suspect that the torque wrench wasn't right. Since the numbers had been in inch lbs I had never reflected on how much is was, but converting it to metric number I imediatly saw how much it should be. On that 25 cm torque wrench handle a force of 4 kg should be applied and when we tested the wrench it would do ~50 kg before clicking..

To make a long story short, the procedure had to be repeted with a bigsert kit. This is the final result:

[merc81]

You obtained the right parts for the repair I'd say. I didn't want to wait to order the insert required so just went to a larger bolt size. It would have been better to do the repair the same way you did. I am just blind as a bat and had my torque wrench set to the wrong number.
I did try to use a copper sleeve the way you could use lead to expand around the old bolt and hold, but copper just won't expand the way lead does.

John

[Flood87]

What a tough slog. I admire your tenacity!