Hi all!
This is an appeal to the collective wisdom of the list -- this weekend I
was trying to get Tristan ('67 1300 race Spit) ready for an autocross
event Sunday. Got the brake master rebuilt and bled brakes and clutch.
I was running the engine to check everything out with it and Phil
noticed oil coming from the front of the engine. I checked it out, and
the PO had stripped one of the oil pan bolt holes in the block and the
bolt had fallen out and oil was dripping from the hole. I pulled the
pan and when I did, I noticed there was a lot of "foamy" oil around the
strainer on the oil pump (which is new). (When I had checked the oil
earlier after running the car a little while the oil on the dipstick was
bubbly too.) All it was were very small bubbles -- the oil did NOT
appear to have any water in it, and was its normal golden brown color.
And it wasn't foamy all the way through -- just a layer on the top.
I siliconed the pan gasket lightly on both sides to get me through the
Sunday event (no time for a helicoil) and replaced it after thoroughly
cleaning the oil pump and replacing it. I was very hacked to find the
same oil leak (from the bolt hole) after I replaced the pan. It drips
out pretty quickly (maybe a drip a second).
So my questions are:
1) What would make the oil bubble up like that? Is it a head gasket
problem? The head was milled to remove some slight warpage and torqued
down correctly on a new gasket. The oil pump drained a bunch of oil
when I removed it, but I am not sure it was bringing oil up into the
valve area, since the engine hadn't run long enough.
2) How the heck would oil come out of the bolt hole in the block? I
tried to look up into it but didn't see much beyond the shreds of metal
from the strip. It didn't appear to be longer than normal, but if the
PO had tried to force a longer bolt into it, could it have tapped into
an oil gallery? (It is not leaking from around the gasket.)
Thanks in advance!! I'm baffled!
Keep Triumphing,
Susan :)
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