Sump Gaskett

Possibly not as bad as it sounds - when mine went the oil dripped directly onto the exhaust manifold. So the smoke was being generated outside the engine, not quite such a sign of ropiness..

Mine was retightened (and a couple of 'wrong size' bolts replaced) and the smoke/drip went away. Until next time it started dripping, which was just the oil filter getting a stone through it..

You could be right. I was wondiring, with this talk of "some kind of "gunk" (like a slightly spongy silicone)" if you could just lossen the bolts, squeeze some gunk into the gap and then tighten them up again (assuming the gasket was the problem, not the tightness of the bolts). It seems to me that the difficult thing would be reattaching the exhast after removing it to get the sump off completely.

I would guess it's only the downpipe/cat section that needs removing, so thats not too bad compared to the whole manifold. I haven't done it though, I've only had the exhaust off from the cat back.

The HBOL suggests you need to lift the engine a few inches to get the sump off completely... I'd definitely go for tightening the bolts first!

Also, as has been said, it might well be worth using chemical metal and not doing a showroom condition gasket replacement since the problem is minor (but annoying) and the fix is very time consuming and disturbs a lot of bits that might then suffer (e.g. AFAICS you disturb the water pump and belts on blacktop engines so they are probably worth replacing while you're in there, etc. etc.)

Just reread this bit. Are you certain it isn't just a holed/rusted through oil filter?

That sounds like a lot of oil to be coming from a knackered gasket.

The front crankshaft oil seals go a lot on these engines too, just to add to the list..

Here, thick shit:

Message-ID:

Hi Dave, yeah mine is at the worse stage i think. smoke bellowing out of bonnet when driving.

Whoops. Hadn't arrived here when I posted.

Ian

It's hardly clean though.

This is a sump, it's not at any pressure, so just goop it up and hope. "Oyltite" is the stuff - it's a stick of chewing-gum-like goop that you squidge into the gap. Check the bolts too - you might find one is actually missing and the leak is through the bolthole.

Also clean the crankcase breather. If that's blocked and the crankcase is running under pressure, it'll make any sump leaks worse. It's a rare sump leak that's this bad though.