A story- I hate chasing oil leaks or An excersize in Frustration

[Bushbasher]

I've just spent over 4 hours this afternoon chasing an oil leak in the Fairlane that, it turned out, should have been fixed 2 months ago by the mechanic at the last gas service. I did an oil change last week and noticed a bit of oil on the front of the engine so today decided to do something about it. When I opened the bonnet I had oil spraying all over the thermo fans and basically all over the front of the engine, oooh errrrr. So I pulled the fans and serpentine belt cover, then degreased everything so I could see where the oil was coming from. After running the engine for a few minutes a trickle of oil started running down from under the bottom and left hand bolts of the VCT cover at the front of the head that the oil line runs intro. No worries says I, I'll pull the bolts and re-seal them, job's right. Did that, wipe down, start up and wait..... trickle returns; hmmmmm, ok, time to get serious. Pull the belt off, wash everything down again and pull off the cover and check the rubber seal. It looked ok but just to be sure, I put a smear of Loctite gasket maker around the outer edge and put it all back together. start 'er up and........... still leaking, damn! Pull it apart again and this time remove the rubber seal and put a couple of layers of thread tape in the seat then put the seal back in. that should do it. Clean everything off again, a smear of grease to help the rubber seal back in now that it sits a bit higher and reassemble making sure to add a little sealant where the cover and rocker cover meet just in case it's coming from there too. Fight with the serpentine belt to get it back on then start 'er up again and...... still leaking, BULL$HIT!! Right, I've had enough of this; pull the belt off, get a new can of degreaser, clean everything down again and dismantle. This time go for the doctor and reseal the whole lot with Form-a-Gasket #4 and fight the belt back into place again then go sit down for 10 minutes to simmer down and let the gasket goo set a bit. Come back and start 'er up gain and wait; sure enough, the little trickle of oil starts again, FFFFFFFFF$#%*^#@&*(!!!!!!!. There's no friggin' way oil is leaking out of that front cover or the rocker cover so where the bloody hell is it coming from. I then checked all the idler bolts as that is what the mechanic said was the problem last time. They were all tight and none (that I could see) showed evidence of leaking. So I ended up sitting in front of the engine and letting it run while I tried to figure out where the bloody hell the oil was coming from. After a few minutes watching the trickle of oil coming off the VCT cover and knowing there was no way oil was coming out of it the penny finally dropped. I had assumed the oil was leaking out of the VCT cover or bolts and onto the casting ridge at the bottom of the head then making it's way over to the fixed idler next to the PS pump then dropping onto the belt where it was then carried around and flung all over the place. What was actually happening was that the oil was coming from the idler bolt itself, running down onto the inside of the idler and the bulk of the oil was then being flung straight up onto the underside of the VCT cover where, of coarse, it then trickled back down following the track described above thus feeding itself, looking for all the world like it was coming from the cover and making it look allot worse than it actually was,. So I pulled the belt off, degreased and cleaned everything AGAIN then removed and resealed the idler bolt before fighting the belt back on AGAIN for the third time this afternoon. Start 'er up and wait....and wait...no leak YAY!! Put 'er back together and go for a drive to the bottle-o to get something to help forget todays aggravation and frustration and upon my return still no leak YAY! and YAY again!, finally, jobs' right! So that's the story of my afternoon, I hope yours was better.

Here endeth the story



Cheers
Bushbasher