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Oil and smoke leak through rocker cover nut


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1985 110 2.5NA

Please see the attached movie. Smoke and oil are coming through the middle nut in the rocker cover.

OK, it was probably doing this before -- the rocker cover was completely covered in old oil before I cleaned it up, but now I'm starting to get smoke in the passenger compartment.

Is this excessive blow-by? Worn rings?  I don't want to just cover up the symptoms by putting  rubber gasket on the nut to keep the oil from coming out.

Thanks for any pointers.

-Evan-

rocker-cover.mov

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it does look like excessive blow-by to me. This could be caused by a few things including worn bore/rings as you suggest, or heavily glazed bores or stuck rings. But from what you say it seems to have suddenly started doing this, which in mind points towards a head gasket leak.

 

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Evan,

Do you have a breather hose from the oil filer cap to the 'cyclone' breather?

I was having a lot of oil leaking from the same stud hole and put a rubber o-ring and washer underneath the nut. This stopped the oil coming out. I did not have smoke however, but do have the crankcase breather hose attached. My engine is newly rebuilt. As it is becoming worn in I am getting less of the positive crankcase pressure.

A picture of your whole engine bay would be helpful.

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I should have been more specific above...  I was seeing a bit of this before (slight escape of smoke), but it certainly wasn't visibly spewing oil out.

This is much worse after taking things apart to replace the water inlet gasket -- seemed like I would never get it started again. Perhaps the excessive cranking pushed things over the edge?

Can I replace the rings with the engine in place?  I'll have to remove the head anyway, so replacing the gasket won't be much more work.

Yes, I do have a breather tube from the filler cap to the cyclone.

-Evan-

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1 hour ago, evanmc said:

This is much worse after taking things apart to replace the water inlet gasket -- seemed like I would never get it started again. Perhaps the excessive cranking pushed things over the edge?

I'm not sure what you mean by "water inlet gasket". Do you mean the thermostat housing (front of the engine protruding on the head) gasket? Cranking the engine over shouldn't cause this problem, what else did you disturb while doing this job?

1 hour ago, evanmc said:

Can I replace the rings with the engine in place?  I'll have to remove the head anyway, so replacing the gasket won't be much more work.

You can replace rings with the engine in place, but you don't know this is the problem at this point. I think you need to take the head off and look carefully at the cylinder head gasket, pistons and bores.

Are you able to borrow a compression tester (for diesel engines) to do a compression check before you do anything else?

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I replaced this gasket.

https://www.lrdirect.com/ERR1607-Gasket-Water-Inlet-2.25-2.5Pddt2T/

I disassembled quite a bit (removing the timing case to get at that gasket), but nothing that would seem to have an impact here.

I'll get a compression tester (assuming I can find the right size glow plug adapter) and test.  

-Evan-

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1 hour ago, evanmc said:

I replaced this gasket.

Okay, now I see.

I don't think this is anything to do with the cause of the high crank pressure. Presumably you changed this gasket as it was leaking, so do you have high pressure in the cooling system? I've had a head gasket fail causing both high crank pressure and a hiss when I took off the coolant cap when cold.

1 hour ago, evanmc said:

I'll get a compression tester (assuming I can find the right size glow plug adapter) and test.

Ensure the one you borrow is suitable for the much higher compression in diesel engines, the most easily available testers are often only designed for the lower pressures found in petrol engines.

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