Fino's 58 Wagon

Removed valve covers, replaced gaskets, cleaned, painted and cured the valve covers, reinstalled....if this keeps the oil leaking at a reasonable level....
A lot of the chevy orange paint is long gone from everything and I am not a big fan of it anyway. So all I had for high temp paint was either the buick green from the 225 rebuild or some leftover silver manifold paint I used on the 225 exhaust manifolds - I chose the silver....

 

Still getting a lot of oil leak, but now it out of the right side VC....a lot of discussion about 1st gen sbc leaky valve covers with only 4 mounting points with limited thread depth, flimsy oem covers that weren't great when new and are easily deformed with over tightening, and the narrow, rough cast iron rim on the head...yup to all of that and especially the top of the head. I did what I thought was a darn nice job getting the VCs flat and smooth along the gasket surface, but I did install gasket dry....might try a bit of high tack or rtv to help as well, and its possible the mismatched mounting bolt that is a bit longer is bottoming out before fully seating the gasket and I am wary of over tightening. We can also try different gasket material as well...Ahh, the tedious fun stuff....

 

yup...but not those super long ones...more oem size...see triangular shaped ones in pic.

 

It's always good to run suspicious length bolts in ahead of time (before putting valve cover on) to check for bottoming out.

 

So pulled the covers off, cleaned off all the oil, ran a tap down the holes and cleaned them out as best as I could and confirmed the depth of the blind holes...they are just deep enough and with the threads cleaned its better for feeling how much things are tightening down before bottoming out.

I redid the set-up with some Permatex high tack (the red brush on stuff that I like in the can) on the VCs and fit the gaskets in there nicely and let them set-up for a while so they would be nicely attached to the VC when I went to install. Then I added a thin smear of RTV along the head side of the gasket and installed - in case you ever think about running a fuel inlet line to the carb directly over your VC - don't do it! Its a complete hassle - but was the POs doing not mine. I also think I would put in studs next time first and not have to deal with installing the hardware while holding everything in place. I also went with Doug's suggestion and grabbed a set of the long hold-downs - they do seem like they will work way better than the triangular ones I used (which might now make there way on the cj).


Of course, for whatever reason, when I grabbed these at FLAPS, I grabbed a single pack (with 4 hold-downs)....so I had to make a return trip to get 4 more for the other side....and as you can see in Doug's pic, the ends are stepped down to help with sealing, but it also means longer hardware is needed, so a trip to the hardware store. So, for a second attempt at this it cost me $22 and 3 trips to the store....but I really wanted to get it done tonight so it can sit and cure all day tomorrow. Its seniors last day and have some final exams and projects and final transcript grades that will start to take time and energy...Plus I got the new upper e-brake cable and it will be nice to have the VCs in before getting that in (the driver side VC could be a bit more finicky to install with the brake cable bracket on the firewall.

 

nope....didn't work....The VCs are better but not good enough and its possible that a lot of the oil coming from the RMS - but its a complete mess. At a loss of what to do next...guess it was fun driving it around for 10min.

 

Assume you mean on top of the heads? Nothing obvious that I could tell, but I wouldn't even know which ones are the drain holes....

The VCs are leaking even at idle, but I could probably deal with that for a bit - but whatever is turning on the gush of oil has to be stopped before I can drive it much of anywhere. The oil is coming out the back of the engine and I think quite a bit is also coming out of the mating surface between the bearing cap and the block. It doesn't leak at idle, or putting around the neighborhood, but it comes out after cruising at speed for a few minutes.

So what is easier - pulling the engine to replace the RMS, or doing it in place? Looks like dropping the oil pan, removing the oil pump and last bearing cap will allow access to the rear main seal....then the fun of working out the upper half of the 2 piece seal and getting the new one in.

 

I ordered an RMS - glad I did a bit of research as the early sbc283 from 57 uses a different seal than the later (59 and after) more common ones. Originally, it would have been a rope seal, but the standard 2piece rubber/silicone replacement (e.g. fel pro 2900) is too thin....the classic chevy specialty stores have 4 piece replacement kits (standard 2 piece neoprene seal and 2 additional wires to fill up space and press the seal forward)....But found out there is one 2-piece rubber seal that is thicker and a direct fit: Best Gasket 3711x and it isn't cheap nor sold much of anywhere. So we'll see....after spending some time looking and thinking and letting oil drip on my face - there are 3 main sources of oil leak that I can determine....1) the RMS, 2) the oil filter adapter and 3) back of the valve cover gaskets....and while the VCs are far from perfect, I can't believe they could be responsible for this kind of massive oil leak.....about the only thing I think isn't leaking is the oil pan gasket, but maybe it is in the back against the rear bearing cap (its the nice 1-piece reinforced/ribbed silicone one). So we'll (me and my frustrated self) pull the pan and the oil filter adapter try it again....Supposedly I have a jeep that actually runs and drives and only leaks reasonable amounts of oil - I should probably go find it.

 

Yea I know it well - I broke it off when I was re-installing the intake manifold last fall and that gave me more practice installing intake manifold gaskets etc....that was my first thought and is what led me to finding the very leaky valve covers....but the fitting itself was dry to my finger (and even the road draft tube was pretty dry)....but its essentially impossible to access that while its running as the distributor, coil and valve cover all block access to it and its up under the recessed section of the firewall that was made to fit the distributor etc...

 

If your valves covers are still leaking checking the drain back holes as 73 cj5 suggested would be a good move.