The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Head Gasket Leaking Oil

Just recently rebuilt a 261 and got it running. During the rebuild, the block surface was milled as was the head. I used a gasket kit from Patrick's, can't remember the brand of gasket, but was not Fel-Pro. There is oil leaking on the right side of the engine in the area where the oil goes up to the rocker arms. Could this be a head gasket problem? I have not re-torqued the head....engine has a little over an hour run time.

I had the rocker arms rebuilt and the re-builder sealed off the oil "return" on the center part of the rocker assembly where oil comes in. Could this be over pressurizing the system causing the head gasket to leak oil?

I think retorquing will cure it.

I tried re-torquing the head today, the bolts didn't move at 95 ft-lbs. This is the same torque wrench that I used during the rebuild, a Snap-on. This tells me the nothing has moved. I also drilled a .062 oil relief hole in the feed to the rocker arms. We'll see if this helps.

When retorquing you need to back each bolt off one at a time then retorque. If you mark the position before loosing each bolt you will see that they tighten farther then before loosing them.
Friction makes it harder to start a bolt moving than to keep it moving. That is why you back it off first then bring it back up to the torque spec in a smooth nonstop move.

Also could some of you're head bolts may be bottomed out, did you check after the head and the block were milled?


Pete

Dang Pete, for this early in the morning your a pretty sharp
cookie. That makes a lot of sense, the bottom of the tapped
hole could also be packed up with crud or the thread rusted
pretty bad below where the bolts originally sat.

I a little confused as to the mod that the machine shop did to
your rocker shaft. Why would he change the way they were being
oiled?

DG

The milling process did not remove that much material from the block or head and all of the treads where chased prior to assembly. With this, I feel confident saying the threads are clean and bolts are not bottoming out.

Dave, I have never done that in the past but understand what you are saying. When assembling the later sixes (194, 230, 250, 292) I never re-torqued the head and they did not give trouble.

I actually used the 216 rocker center sectoin to oil the 261 rocker shaft. I tapped the head for pipe threads and put a brass 90* elbow and ran a oil line from the head to the rocker arms. This would allow the rocker arms to get full oil pressure. This may have been more oil pressure than the head gasket wanted and allowed some to seep out. I drilled the hole in the brass elbow to relieve some pressure. Next time I have the valve cover off I'll get a photo. It will be next week before I can re-start the engine to see if this helped.