My 57 GMC truck came from the factory with a Pontiac 347" V8. Being a daily
driver, I have made certain reliability/safety upgrades such as HEI and disk
brakes. To make it easier to change the oil (and find filters) I pulled the
filter mount from a '77 Pontiac 400 and used it to mount a spin-on PF-25 oil
filter in place of the original cartridge type filter. The spin on is
considerably smaller that the can.
I continue to put 6 quarts of oil into my engine when changing oil & filter. I
have noticed that the engine seems to go about 1/2 to 3/4 quart low within a
week or so after changing the oil. If I top it off it does it again. If I
don't top it off it seems to settle in and use no more. The oil pan seems to
have oil on the outside, but I cant tell exactly where it is coming from.
Seems to be the front of the engine, but I put a new front crank seal on last
Thanksgiving. Didn't change the oil use.
Dummy that I am, I put a chrome dipstick/dipstick tube on the beast a couple of
years ago. The level was not properly marked for my engine, so the next time I
changed the oil I put in 4 quarts (one quart low if not changing the filter),
waited for the new oil to drain into the pan, stabbed the dipstick and used a
file to mark "low" on the dipstick. I then added a quart, marked "full" the
same way and finished up by adding another quart for the filter.
I'm wondering if using 6 quarts in the machine is too much and is causing
seepage which eventually ends up dripping off my engine. I know that the late
model filter is no where near a quart big.
One other gotcha. When I had the pan off last year I noticed that the baffle
that normally mounts in the crankcase was missing. Could this have anything to
do with my oil consumption problem?
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