I know what the answer is before I even ask it, but I’m hoping someone will tell me that its normal and to just keep driving her the way I have been and its gonna go away, NOT!
I’ve put 500 miles on her so far since I first bought my ’50, 3604 and finished the valve job and the other mechanicals so she’s safe to drive on the highway. Compression is 130 across the board and she runs a nice as can be, just the normal tappet noises and what you would expect to hear from the crankcase vents on an old engine. I get her all wiped down so she looked real purty and take her out for a little exercise and I gotta wipe her down again when we get back home. Like most of them are supposed to do, she’s got a little drip problem, but, maybe a little more than normal!
I’ve got no smoke at all, none on acceleration, none at throttle off, none on start up, no smoke at all. Plugs are burning real purty also. At the VC and side cover it’s a little moist, just a little, not enough to even speak about, more like a little mist from the breather.
But the pan, now that’s another story. That’s where the Depends comes in to the picture.
Oil drippin’ from the pan, oil drippin’ from the fly wheel cover, oil drippin from the bottom of the transmission. How much earl ya leakin’, bout a quart every 100miles he says. Now that’s way to much and I was wondering if any O’ you guys are getting that kind of oil mileage out of your 216’s? What I don’t want to here is CHANGE YOUR REAR MAIN SEAL DUMMY!!! But I think that’s what’s next at this point.
How many problems am I gonna encounter dropping the pan? The crank has to be dropped some to get the new upper rope in, does this mean that the trans and all has to be pulled back to do that? The reason I’m so hesitant about dropping the pan is that once I get into it, due to my character, I’m gonna start thinking why not just new bearings, and then while I’m in there, why not just rebuild the oil pump, and if I gotta pull the trans back it might be a good time to drop it and rebuild it, I’m this far so I should probably change the clutch and have the flywheel ground. Ya know, I might just be better off pulling the darn engine and have the short block rebuilt now instead of later! Boy do I hate to think about stopping that leak!!!!!
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
