If your blowing the gasket out with the pegs in the pan, then you may have other issues that need fixing, thats pretty heavy duty pressure in the crank.

Hmmm...Leak down test, see whats up. Something is very wrong. If it blew out with the pegs, then you had to tear the gasket, meaning there is pressure.

 

Would an aluminium spacer shaped the same as the pan sides with an O ring each side work? Then you could torque down a solid spacer and the O rings would seal both sides. Front and rear may be a problem, but there are seals that are made for these areas too. If it would work, it does not seem to hard to make or expensive. Who would want a set? I can ask if it is possible to work, cost etc. Just need to know how many would be interested.

 

Sounds interesting :-) I'm interested.

 

A one way valve on the oil cap to vent pressure?

 

So I get back from a very very long trip (13 flights in 4 weeks) and set about the painfull task of tearing down the damn motor to do the oil pan after what I thought was a belt and braces approach. Looked like one area of the gasket did not get enough adhesive and was alredy bulged slightly on install. The peg grabbed right at the inside edge and one section blew out. The rest of the gasket looked good and was stuck like a bastard.

With regard to the vent, I ran the 'Salama' vent on the oil cap before fitting my new turbo and Link 2, but on the run that I blew the gasket out I never used it. This time round, I will do like Tony G. I found some spark plug savers (???) that have an M18 thread that match the cam cover plug threads. These can be crossed over to 3/8" NPT. Like Tony, I will take feeds on the front and back ports on the cam cover after removing the plugs, T them together and weld up a separate connection point to my custom J pipe. That should solve any excessive pressure issues. So back to the oil pan and a plan for an 'anti bulging' device......

Sice doing my oil pan on my first 951 a number of years ago I have often though of making a gaket retainer. I fabricated somthing today that looks pretty decent. Should work a treat. Its basically a flat bar that hugs the porifile of the gasket when installed and is welded to some 'tabs' that share the bolting. This attached pic shows it being welded up to tabs, I use 4 tabs that share the bolt holes, missing one between. The bar is profiled and notches to fit and towards the pully side runs up over the pan lip to 'hug' the gasket as far forward as possible. Towards the flywheel it ir radiused slightls then stops as it would interfere with the flywheel otherwise. The tops of the bar is just below the height of the gasket spacers so it cannot interfere with the preloading the gasket. Takes a while aligning and hand fitting everything but once it was grined and cleaned up, it looks good and fits well, Should work a treat. I trial fitted it and it goes on fine. I will be fitting a new gaskets soon and will let you know how it goes.

 

Fabrication and fit up in progress. Note the gap from the bar to the pan edge to allow the gaket to squish slighly when torqued.

 

another

 

Cleaned up and ready to install. The upper bar has to go on with the pan because of the heat shield. lower cab be bolted up separately.

 

Looks very good, too bad the factory didn't do this !

 

B951S

"that's what I'm talking about!...."

Good work.

I see the John Anderson "pegs"... but one thing for sure is that you need to make damn sure that when the oil pan is tightened down, that the pegs don't touch the block. If this happens, the gasket will leak for sure....

Reviewing our design, I would say that the pegs are too long. I have no idea if they are all the way down, ow how big they actually are in person.... So I could be way off base here :-)

But that's it. I've thought about the same ideas when this issue has come up, although I've never had the problem (which I seriously belive is related to the gasket surfaces not being properly cleaned or the oil pan not being torqued properly)..

But the retainer thingy is great insurance. I'll have to have one for my next engine. Let me know if you plan to make them for other people.

Good work ...

TonyG

 

TonyG, the pegs are shorter than the alu spacers in the pan gasket, so they cannot contact the block before the spacers do.

B951S, that looks great, I'd be interested as well.

Sam

 

Tony,

PD is making a solid spacer with an O Ring each side. I asked them sometime ago about this. I have no idea what they have done about this to date, but they do have it scheduled to do. Ask them.

 

The peg idea works great my good friend crieg limpster invented this back in 1989 when we worked at a porsche dealership in northern cal. The wall welded to the outside of the pan is awesome and should do the trick but the real problem is blow by. Are the rings indexed correctly on the piston? Is there to much piston to wall clearance? Is the cyclinder wall out of round? Are the rings seated if not why? What im getting at is dont put a bandaid on the real issue. But use the pegs and wall to further aid in holding the gasket in place on and engine with sound fundamentals.

 

B951s, that looks great. How much of a gap did you leave between the brackett and the oil pan? Reno

 

Tony,
The pegs are slightly shorter than the spacers. I checked this by using a flat edge and making sure the spacers are taller than both the pegs and the top of the bar. The pictures are probably decieving.

Also, I agree that the gasket problems I have been experiencing are probably from cleanliness / torquing as opposed to ring sealing problems. my motor is 60k, good compression / leakdown.

M42racer, how are PD gonna seal off the curved ends?? Will they transition back to rubber at each end? I bet the pd spacers end up costing a bomb. This method cost me about $5 and a few hours fabbing at home. Hopefully PD can keep the costs down.

Reno, I left about 1/8" gap.