Club 80-90 Forums

Slow oil leak from area of oil filter.
Slow coolant leak from area below plastic coolant pressure tank.
Sometimes these very minor problems obviously get lost in the noise so to speak But

Seemed simple at first septin:
The oil leak eventually tracked down to the level below my oil cooler plumbing adapter for the Kenlow oil cooler I fitted nearly ten years ago. A half nut was fitted under the sleeve type extender and I guess that ten years of oil filter changes had gradually loosened it.

I have had to re-seal the level sensor seal on my plastic coolant pressure tank almost on an annual basis for yonks and was completely baffled with it. So this time I ordered a new tank,sensor and Dalec and made temporary Poo or bust repair with Gorilla Glue as it was going to be changed anyway. It still leaked!
When the new tank was fitted I "deconstructed" the old tank/sensor only to discover that the leak was from a fine crack in the sensor above the "o" ring which presumably had been allowing the seal area to lift over time.

Happy days
CS

Happy days indeed. roll on summer.

Citizen Smith wrote:Slow oil leak from area of oil filter.
Slow coolant leak from area below plastic coolant pressure tank.
Sometimes these very minor problems obviously get lost in the noise so to speak But

Seemed simple at first septin:
The oil leak eventually tracked down to the level below my oil cooler plumbing adapter for the Kenlow oil cooler I fitted nearly ten years ago. A half nut was fitted under the sleeve type extender and I guess that ten years of oil filter changes had gradually loosened it.

I have had to re-seal the level sensor seal on my plastic coolant pressure tank almost on an annual basis for yonks and was completely baffled with it. So this time I ordered a new tank,sensor and Dalec and made temporary Poo or bust repair with Gorilla Glue as it was going to be changed anyway. It still leaked!
When the new tank was fitted I "deconstructed" the old tank/sensor only to discover that the leak was from a fine crack in the sensor above the "o" ring which presumably had been allowing the seal area to lift over time.

Happy days
CS

Nice one

I had the sensor leaking up via the two metal probes, took me ages to find that out.

Happy days, well done

By the way I forgot to mention that the drain plug stripped at the last stage. Clearly the thread had been over tightened/started cross threaded a few times in the vans long life.

Rather than going through the helicoil process I went for a 16 mm conversion using the standard (courser) thread and a shortened 16mm Allen cap head set screw who's head fitted snugly in the shallow pocket around the drain hole. I also turned up a softer plastic washer to replace the copper washer.
I poured the top - cleaner - couple of litres of the old oil in again so as to flush any loose swarf down the hole before putting the new oil in.

I know this will not go down well with the more pedantic types and contradicts the manufacturers design. But having considerable salvage scheme experience as an Aerospace Engineer I believe that proprietary copper washers require excessive tightening torque even when annealed and that the somewhat more agricultural thread form in the course metric threads is more suitable than a finer thread particularly in aluminium castings.

CS
I guess I should add that I do not recommend departing from original design unless you are confident/proficient in doing so.