6cta oil leak – options?

[Nicholas]

My port engine has slowly leaked oil as long as I’ve had it. Generally had to add a quart a couple of times a season (every 50 hours or so).

Just did ~400 nm in 3 days and it suddenly has gotten dramatically worse – now need to add a quart every ~8 hours and the leak is pretty visible.

I may have more than one leak…but this seems to be the main/worst one.

How sensitive are the oil pan bolts to over tightening? Can I grab a large socket wrench and give them some muscle?

I’m 800 miles from my home marina and hoping i don’t have to drop the oil pan…

Topic

[Rob Schepis]

Thanks for the follow-up and nicely done putting the admiral to work. My wife was key when it was time to reinstall the genset exhaust manifold last spring – tight quarters, needed the second set of hands and I knew she was COVID free!

[Nicholas]

post-repair follow-up

Just wanted to report back on this. I decided to bite the bullet and drop the oil pan. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have spent so much time wringing my hands over it.

Removing the broken studs was simple and the oil pan itself was not heavy at all. I decided to replace the gasket as well, although I did not know to put any sort of RTV or gasket sealant on it, which I hope doesn’t bite me later.

If I had not been replacing the gasket, it probably could have been a 1-person job by installing longer threaded studs and lowering the oil pan only part of the way down. But because i had to get the gasket around the sump, I had to drop it all the way down, and thus needed a second set of hands to raise it back up evenly. I did put in temporary studs to help with alignment bringing it back up.

My wife ended up helping me…she is much better sized than me for working on the outboard side of the engine.

The hardest part was retorquing the bolts on the front and back of the oil pan where access is terrible. Never was able to get a torque wrench on them – had to install them by feel and tighten them with whatever combination of extensions and sockets and ratchet handles would fit.

Anyway, its now fixed and only leaks the “normal” amount now. 🙂

[Bill Stenger]

I would pull the pan for this one unfortunately. Then use vice grips and hope they ease right out. Drilling in the aloted space seems like a nightmare with low % of not damaging the threads in my opinion.

[toolman]

extracting bolts

if the bolts are not rusted in which they might not be because of the oil, with the head already broken off the tension on the threads has been released, if you use a left hand drill sometimes the bite of the drill bit will back out the broken bolt, you have to drill the bolt to use an ez out anyway so it makes sence to try left hand drills.

[Nicholas]

Ok thanks. I may see if I can get some help. Removing the coolers and trying an ez out seems like the best route, but I guess I run the risk of ruining the threads on the block if I get misaligned.

Dropping the oil pan seems “safest,” but is beyond my abilities.

[Francis Valerio]

I answered you on bertram31.com but copy and pasted here,

In reality the oil pan probably will need to be dropped.

If you have no other way then drop the pan. I know you probably will not be able to remove the pan without lifting the engine but with the pan dropped there “MAY” possibly be enough of the sheared bolts to get vise grip onto and ease them out.

You could get lucky with a right-angle drill and drill hole into sheared shaft of the bolts and then use an EZ -out but there will be NOTHING EZ about that.

I think you have a cast aluminum pan (I am not sure on that) that may have eaten away at the bolts from electrolysis????

Good luck and keep us posted

[Bill]

Wow. Sounds like someone tried to stop a leak by tightening the bolts and over cranked them. Only reason I am posting is to suggest you double check the two seawater pump mounting bolts as well, if you have not already. I have seen those vibrate loose and cause loss of oil.

[Nicholas]

Oil pan bolts sheared off (!!)

(apologies if this is a duplicate post but my posting disappeared after i thought i posted it)

Decided to go ahead and try to tighten the oil pan bolts, and to my horror there were 6 missing bolts on the aftercooler side of the engine, all in a line from the aft most bolt to the middle of the pan.

2 of the bolts in the middle section were just plain missing – so I got some metric bolts from the h/w store and put them in.

The last 4 bolts all have sheared off heads. I found 2 sheared off heads in the bilge.

So, it appears I’ve been running for who knows how long with several missing oil pan bolts, and 2 more just let go, leading to the big leak.

Any suggestions of the best removal method for getting the 4 bolt studs out? They are all flush, or slightly recessed, so there is no way to grip them. It’s possible if I remove the aftercooler and fuel cooler, I could get a drill underneath the pan. But I’ll be holding the drill up side down and would have to drill them out blind, and the oil pan itself will probably interfere keeping the drill straight.

Has anyone done this before in this tight of a space and had success?

[Nicholas]

I THINK the oil pan seal is the most severe of several possible leaks. Its possible that oil is just collecting there from a leak above, but when I run the engine, I think I can actually see a little bit of oil oozing out of that seam, and after a long run yesterday, the near-by stringer and floor of the engine room was covered in a misting of oil. Only other thing i can think of is that i damaged a fitting or something above that area when I put the aftercooler back on after servicing it a few weeks ago.

Also, access to my oil fill isn’t great and I occasionally spill some oil when filling, which then finds its way down the side of the engine. So some of what you are seeing is from that. But, like i said, i also think i have more than one leak.

I will clean up the engine, run it a little more, try to find the other leaks and post some more pics, but I’m 99% sure this area is the severe leak responsible for the recent dramatic up tick in leak rate.

[Rob Schepis]

Sure it’s the pan ?
Have you cleaned all 100% and monitored it ?
See attached — Looks like it’s coming from above, no?

[Author]

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