Oil Leak Abolished

In previous posts (here and here) I talked about my oil leak problems.

Since I got the bus back from the first mechanic, it's been leaking oil like a sieve. Second mechanic said it was leaking from EVERYWHERE and I would most likely have to crack the case and replace all the gaskets.

Since then, I've been driving it, watching the oil, filling it and driving it more.

I've been calling around and trying to find a replacement engine because I really don't have a desire to rebuild an engine in this cold. I'll post my findings because I did find a great place to buy a rebuilt engine from.

Today, I was driving the kids over to my parents and noticed that my bus was smoking. Turned out it was oil on my exhaust.

So, although unplanned, my Dad and I attacked trying to find the leak. there was oil everywhere.

After wiping it all down and digging around, we determined it was most likely coming from the where the oil filler neck connected to the sump. on top of that is the tube that the dip stick slides through. The first mechanic had totally jerry-rigged a crappy solution. First we thought that maybe oil was coming from that. we were wrong.

Here's the jerry-rigged sleave:


Next we took the oil filler neck off. The weight of the box-wrench caused the nut to spin. This had to be it. We ended up having to loosen a piece of the engine tin that the Oil filler went through. We also had to remove the muffler and cross-over pipe.

By removeing the nuts as best we could and then twisting around the neck, we got it out.

Problems:

• The bolts were just shafts with nuts on them.
• Nuts were freaking Loose
• No lock washers.
• Doubled up gaskets.
• Installed by a Moron

We managed to get the bolts off. The hardest part was replacing the tube that connects the dip stick tube on the neck to the tube that went through the fan shroud.

My dad made a replacement gasket while I bought new hex head bolts with lock washers. They were 13mm heads, 8mm diameter with a 1.25 pitch.

Managed to finagle it back in and got the rubber tube over the dip stick shafts. Next was the gasket and then the bolts.

Writing that makes it seem easy but it was just an odd location, we didn't take the engine out and it was the first time we had done any of that. My arms are killing me.

Here's the finished Oil Filler Tube. To me it looks awesome. New Gasket and New Bolts:


During all this, we realized that my engine was missing a thermostat. The pully for it is just sitting there and the space where it should be is empty:


Here's the lone pully to control the shrouds:


Here's the thermostat that I'm missing (021119159A):


Apparently its hard to find and expensive.

Have to find one of those, but right now it just runs cold. It's not the end of the world and was probably too expensive or hard to find so it wasn't replaced before.

Casey