JerryIrons
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- May 27, 2010
- Messages
- 125
I have a small oil leak that has progressively gotten worse, right where the elbow screws into the oil pan. (the other elbow end holds the dipstick tube) After some troubleshooting, I discovered that the bracket that holds the top of the dipstick tube to the engine hook has broken, allowing some vibration to loosen things up? A few days of penetrating oil and whacks with a hammer on a flare nut wrench let me loosen up the flare nut and take the dipstick tube off, and I discovered that the elbow was really loose, I unscrewed it by hand and it was so loose a baby could have unscrewed it. (this was all loose before I began to remove the dipstick tube, it was pretty obvious why the leak was there once I started wiggling things around)
Tightening up the elbow by hand works, but points the dipstick tube down into lower corner of boat, which of course is not going to work. I did manage to find a new old stock elbow at a good price, and screwed that in by hand and seems to work much better, I can put a wrench or something on it and get it tight to point correctly. Also found a used dipstick tube on ebay cheap, one that has a good bracket so I should be all set I guess. In retrospect I could have fashioned a homemade bracket, but I got the part for less than $20 and had the parts on hand at least.
Has anyone seen this kind of leak before? I'm just kind of puzzled about why it happened to begin with. From what I can tell, there is no gasket or o-ring there between the elbow and oil pan, and it seems the design is for the elbow to screw in like natural gas black pipe, with tapered threads. So it would probably be a good idea to put some type of teflon pipe dope that is compatible with oil and high temperatures? Maybe something like Permatex High Temperature Thread Sealant. I couldn't find anything in the manual on this.
Tightening up the elbow by hand works, but points the dipstick tube down into lower corner of boat, which of course is not going to work. I did manage to find a new old stock elbow at a good price, and screwed that in by hand and seems to work much better, I can put a wrench or something on it and get it tight to point correctly. Also found a used dipstick tube on ebay cheap, one that has a good bracket so I should be all set I guess. In retrospect I could have fashioned a homemade bracket, but I got the part for less than $20 and had the parts on hand at least.
Has anyone seen this kind of leak before? I'm just kind of puzzled about why it happened to begin with. From what I can tell, there is no gasket or o-ring there between the elbow and oil pan, and it seems the design is for the elbow to screw in like natural gas black pipe, with tapered threads. So it would probably be a good idea to put some type of teflon pipe dope that is compatible with oil and high temperatures? Maybe something like Permatex High Temperature Thread Sealant. I couldn't find anything in the manual on this.
