Well my dad and I have been rebuilding the engine over the past couple years on our 78 Sedan and we took it for it's first drive on the road today. While doing so, we noticed a constant fizz of leakage around the thermostat housing, against the engine block (head). When we got home, we drained the coolant from the system and removed the thermostat housing to reinstall it with a new gasket. Doing so caused it to SPRAY now, instead of a slight leak.
We're thinking it's because the housing tabs, where the screws go through, are bent to far out and are pushing the housing away from the head, leaving a gap for coolant to leak out. If we were to stack two gaskets with gasket sealant between the gaskets and on the housing side, would this stop the leak?
Other than gasket stacking, I can't think of any other way to fix this besides replacing it with a new housing, which I can't seem to find anywhere. There's one wrecking yard here that has five or six pintos, but they're all stacked on top of eachother, so climbing up to fine what we need isn't going to work (to dangerous).
Is there a housing I can rob from another car that would work for this, or is there something we can do to repair the one we have?
We're using the 2.3 liter 4 cylinder engine.
~Dave
Most likely the two gasket idea won't work.
If you think it is bent and you have access to a small anvil (or a hard metal item that could be used as one) and lightly hammer the housing back flat.
I do see those on ebay time to time, and go for 5 to 15 bucks. The tend to rust as well.
Bill
Do you have a belt sander? Or a good wide file? Or anything really flat and abrasive? You could try making the housing mating surface flat again that way.
Last night I was thinking of sanding it flat if nothing else. Dad just went to the ford dealer to see if they can order one, but I also read that the SVO Mustangs use the same engine, as well as the same water outlet. If I get lucky I might be able to find one at a wrecking yard with the engine intact.
Thanks for the tips guys. I'll let you know how it goes.
Starting from the beginning, you said that the lleak got worse AFTER you changed the gasket. Are you sure that the thermostat
1. was reinstalled correctly, and
2. didn't slip out of position while you were tightening the bolts down? (Both of these happen more often than you might think.)
I know that RTV is in vogue for almost every gasket application these days, but sometimes the older, thick and very sticky sealers work better on some applications to help hold things in place during assembly thermostats. I've taken to smearing a light coating of non-hardening sealer on the edges of thermostat flanges and then sticking the thermostat into the recess, (basically almost gluing it in place) just to prevent this slippage from happening.
Other thoughts:
It's possible that the housings' sealing surface (while actually FLAT and in a single plane), may be corroded or pitted to the point that there is not a continuous layer of metal at the sealing surface. I had one that was in this condition once, and it basically was an irreplacable item so I had to make it work.
If yours IS severely corroded, you may not be able to resurface it deeply enough to still keep a deep enough recess for the flange of the thermostat. If it has ALREADY been resurfaced to that point, you will have to be creative or probably get a different one. If this is the situation, you may be able to make a reliable seal by coating the metal surface of the housing itself with a permanent type of sealer such as metal paste epoxy and then after that dries, using emery cloth on top of a large flat, machined surface, to produce a truly flat surface without removing more than a minimum of metal. A belt sander isn't exactly a good way to do this, as they tend to cut very quickly, requiring an extremely light touch and a very fine grade of abrasive to NOT remove too much material and very few have a platen that is large enough to give you much working room.
If it has ALREADY been resurfaced to the point that the flange keeps the housing from contacting the gasket but the surface is good enough to seal, multiple gaskets, or cutting one from a thicker gasket material may work. I keep several different thicknesses of roll gasket material on hand for situations such as this, and sometimes just cut my own anyway, to save a trip to the store.
The recess in the housing for the thermostat MIGHT be able to be cut deeper, but how?
On the way home from work dad and I were talking about it and thinking that the thermostat may have slipped, as you suggested, and is keeping it from sealing properlly. This is a high possibility because the recess in the housing does not grab the thermostat at all. I might end up getting some gasket roll stuff and try cutting my own before I go about modifying/repairing the housing.
We may be going to the wrecking yard tomorrow, so we might be able to find an early Ranger or Mustang SVO to pull one off. However the chances of that are rather low. :(
If you can find one from a different car or truck just make sure that the tube has the same angle as some cars have the hoses connecting to different sides of the radiators.
There are a good amount of non-svo mustangs with n/a 2.3's around.
I would not recamend doing any modifications to the housing; A little adhesive can hold the thermostat in place while you install the housing.
Bill
Don't know where it came from, but I've got one that is made of cast-iron, looks like an aftermarket piece. I would check with a NAPA or some other parts store about one.
And one more thought:
On some of the Ford engines the thermostat recess is actually partly/mostly/completely in the head instead of being wholly in the the thermostat housing, and if so, there may be a difficult to dislodge but significant layer of built up and hardened OEM and aftermarket gasket sealer that can be scraped out to get back to the original necessary depth. It's worth carefully checking for this if you haven't done so already.
You should be ale to get a new water outlet if you need it; I just bought one a couple of months ago. If I remember right, it was made by Stant...
Yeah, I spotted the Stant one on Schuck's website and was going to order it, but dad had already ordered a new one from the local Ford dealer, which is being shipped in from Texas.
He went to the wrecking yard to day and picked up an original side mirror off an 80 Pinto sedan we've been pulling parts off for the past month, and he found a water outlet housing on the engine of it to. He brought it home and we cleaned it up before I left to work today. It did have some burnt on/crusted OEM sealant/gasket on it which I used a razor blade to carefully remove from the recess with the thermostat sits in. Then we got some slightly tacky silicon gasket sealate from NAPA and applied it to both sides of the gasket. So far so good, it doesn't seem like the thermostat dropped any while installing it all back onto the engine head. We'll see tomorrow when we fill it all back up and take it for a test drive.
I'll keep you all updated.
Well, that leak is fixed! The housing we pulled from the wrecking yard engine has a deeper groove in it for the thermostat to sit in and stay put wiht the help of some tacky silicon sealant. Thanks for all of your help everyone!
Now we have a MAJOR oil leak problem around the camshaft and possibly the main seal to as well. :'( :'(
All the front seals are easy. I have done the two part rear main seal with the engine in the car, but IMHO it is better to just pull the engine; I had two where the upper section was dry and would not slide out and I had to pull the engine. The valve cover gasket is another place to look at for oil leaks, and while you are at it, you should change the lifters, and valve seals too.
Bill
77,
I'm surprised that you couldn't get that dry "upper seal" section out. Someone ahead of you probably complicated your task. In situations such as this, I usually use
an appropriately sized pin punch (the ones ground with a round cross section and a flat ground tip) or a cut off portion of the lower seal section to tap on one of the exposed upper seal ends to get it started. The pin punch method, (or a wooden dowel) even works with REALLY old, rope type seals.
For others in the same situation:
Over time, I've found that the main reason that the modern rigid formed split seals that I've encountered tend to get stuck fast, is improper installation, and no attempt at cleaning the upper groove if it shows any remaining seal material or adhesive. When a seal is first REPLACED the problem usually starts, and is then repeated on subsequent replacement.
Many repair manuals do not specify this, but in MANY/MOST? instances for this type application, the old school method, (formerly called the common sense method, but common sense is now a commodity in short supply) of leaving a short part of one end of the upper seal section protruding, usually makes subsequent replacement much easier as well as decreasing the odds of an oil leak at the plane where both of the seal ends as well as the seal cap or seal/bearing cap would have otherwise all been joining the block. When installed this way, and the seal ends are clean, using a tiny bit of sealant at their ends, the pathway for seal leakage is first interrupted and (hopefully) blocked.
There are exceptions to this method of installation, and the FACTORY repair manuals will usually spell out the procedure and may even indicate why it is being done. The more generalized AFTERMARKET manuals will frequently leave out quite a bit of supportive material in their instructions, such as this.
Also, while there are exceptions to this, with a well-fitted crank seal, it is often very possible to use no sealant anywhere but at the seal ends, however, many people will use sealant on the seal where it slides into the groove, thinking that it will seal better. There is a small chance that it MAY POSSIBLY seal better this way, but it definitely WILL make any subsequent seal removal more difficult and may also result in having sealant ooze out onto the seal lip and transfer to the journal that the seal is attempting to seal. If the sealant used is a type that dries completely, once dry, it may then abrade the seal lip, causing a new leak.
I pulled the valve cover off and it didn't even seal around the front pillar where the cover is "U" shaped to fit around it (the front of the valve cover). The sides of that pillar never touched the valve cover seal, thus any and all oil was being pushed out around there. I searched and found out someone else here had a similar problem but around the flat area of the gasket, and they doulbed up two gaskets, will this work in my situation? The engine has been rebuilt and the lifters and valve seals were replaced when I had the head rebuilt because of a bad camshaft. My cousin did all the work and used some cork Fel-pro seal around the valve cover. They're around $5 a piece at schucks. Should I get two of these and double them up?
I don't know if the main seal is bad or not yet, I'll get this valve cover problem fixed first though, as it could just be that oil has been drawn to the bottom of the engine by the belts or just plain old gravity.
You could use some blue silicone sealer and place a nice 1/4 bead in that area, on the gasket. Let it set up for about and hour or so ( dry to the touch but not hard) and re-install the valve cover. hand tighten all the bolts and cinch the " two horizontal bolts, one on either side of the front cam tower) down first, sung but not tight. then sung the next two, either side of the front tower etc. This should form a " custom gasket" and should work fine. Before you install the valve cover, place a very thin coat of oil on the mating surface of the head, then next time you need to pull the cover it wont stick.
Well I got the new rubber seal in and it fits and seals fine...I had to squeeze the front of the valve cover inward to make it seal correctly, but my leak is still there. I'm thinking it might be the front rubber camshaft seal. Is it possible to change this out with the engine in the car? There's also the possibility that a front seal might not even be in there, as I found two round rubber seals with metal bodies, like wheel bearing seals, that came with the engine rebuild kit. I wasn't around when the head was being rebuilt, so it's possible that my cousin forgot to install them....I sure hope that's the only problem. :(
Groan.
Those 2 seals you found ARE likely to be the cam and front crankshaft seals, unless maybe the rebuild kit covered engines using different sized cam and crank shaft seal journal diameters and had a few extras.
You should be able to easily do a visual inspection to either actually SEE the oil flowing out past the cam seal (if you run the engine for a short time with the belt cover off or out of the way, you should be able to see this) and to determine if the cam seal has been replaced recently, (by loosening the cam gear bolt several turns, levering the pressure off of the belt and sliding the gear and belt guide forward a bit) as the seals' metal body SHOULD still be quite clean and shiny. If you do not disturb the belts' position relative to the gears, the timing will not change when you do this. The crank seal is harder to see and requires moving or taking more stuff off even to get a good look.
Many times the cam seal on an overhead cam engine can be removed without removing the cam, and without too much of a problem, and as long as you are VERY careful not to scratch the area of the cam where the seal rides when removing the old seal, a new one should stop a seal leak. If the cam is rusty or heavily encrusted in this area, a better idea is to remove the cam, and clean/polish it somewhere that you have good lighting and can work carefully to see how the work is progressing, instead of working partially blind with it still in the head
In any case, if you do decide to try to do it with the cam installed, be sure to carefully check that the area of the cam that the seal rides on is very clean of any burned on oil residue, rust, or sealer, BEFORE trying to install the new seal, as the new seals' lip can be easily damaged simply by sliding it into position over something rough. Some people also use a single layer of plastic tape on the appropriate part of the cam shaft to protect the seal when sliding it into position if it has to slide snugly over a keyway, as these frequently are either very sharp or damaged and can nick the new seal.
If you don't have an appropriate sized socket to use as a seal installer, you can usually use the OLD seal turned around backwards and a short piece of pipe for this purpose, (as long as it has not been distorted very much by removal). Once the new seal is lined up or partway onto the cam, (and after the old one is there too, if you intend on using it as a driver) it is usually a good idea to wrap the exposed end of the cam with at least several layers of electrical tape or something similar, as one stray hit on the wrong part of the front end of the camshaft can make it next to impossible to get the cam gear back on (and a LOT harder to get off next time too), and if that does happen, you will probably spend some time with a hand file fixing the damage before being able to reinstall the gear.
Just as I suspected, no seal at the front of the camshaft what-so-ever. Dad helpped me install it and he had a seal installation tool handy, so that made it all pretty easy. We removed the radiator before getting in there to do anything, which made things a whole world easier to work on. We'll be putting the car back together tomorrow to check for leaks again, but I think we'll be safe now...
The crankshaft seal is in place, as well as the auxilery shaft seal, so we have one spare one left. I bet that the oil sprayed out from the front of the head just drizzled down the front of the engine, which made it appear that the crankshaft was leaking oil to. All in all, I think we're safe to drive it now, just need to get the rear wheels balanced, as the car vibrates over 40 mph. We swapped the front wheels to the back to make sure that they were the problem.
I find it VERY suprising that hte front cam seal was never installed, as my cousin was a mechanic for 40 years, and is now 10 years retired. He owned two Cheveron shops here in Idaho and now builds drag racers and engines in his spare time. He raced stock cars for about 15 years until he rolled his car and messed up his back, which landed him in a hospital for six months and he gave up racing.
It's just mind blowing, for me and my dad, that a vital seal installation was...rejected.
I'm just glad it wasn't much work to get it all fixed. :)
Glad to hear you have it going well. It is not that un-common for things to be left off during maintinance, there was someone recently that had a timing belt done and the crank pulley guid was left off.
As far as the tires, if they vibrate that bad at 40mph, it is most likely that the tires are bad if the car was sitting for any lenght of time; more so if any of them were flat. Check for dry-rot too.
Bill
Yeah, the car sat around for at least 6 years. Dad went and got me some new tires for the back for the back at $40 each, which I'll just pay off with each paycheck.
The head of the engine was actually rebuilt, not just some maintenance done to it. We replaced all the bearings, lifters, rockers, camshaft, other seals, new rods as well.