Hi all,

As some of you may know, i finished building my locost last summer and after starting her up for the first time i started to notice the plethora of leaks it had; the radiator and water pump leaked, the fuel pump and regulator leaked too.... pretty much everything leaked except the oil, she held on to her drink on that one.

Well today (six months later) i came back to it to fix these leaks and after changing the radiator and water pump for brand new replacements and fixing the fuel pipe unions, i was happy to find the leaks were gone, so i fired her up again, only to find quite a noticeable oil leak coming from the front of the engine while running. So i stopped the engine, took a closer look and found the leak was coming from the camshaft area of the engine trickling down to the crank and spraying oil everywhere, so all my hopes of taking her out for a spin were shattered. As i was surprised to find an oil leak where there wasn't before, i nipped up the front rocker cover bolts to see if it was the gasket that was the culprit, but no luck. I even had a closer look to see if it could be the head gasket but it was dry and the engine runs sweet.

so basically, there's a trickle of oil coming out from what seems to be the front camshaft oil seal when the engine is running, once the engine is stopped it doesn't leak anymore so my bets go to the camshaft oil seal which means taking the engine apart again to change the seal.

The engine was entirely rebuilt from scratch with brand new seals and gaskets, so i cant for the life of me figure out why it started to leak now. Just wanted to share this with you guys to see if you agree. i'm even starting to think maybe it needs some running in before all seals start to work properly this being such a dirty little engine, but i'm all out of ideas.

cheers!

You can change that seal quite easily you just need to remove the camshaft pulley, be very careful though when fitting the new one that you do not damage the lip. I had a problem with a non OE part but when I changed it for a proper ford one it has been fine ever since.

As above not a big job
jacko

They also leak from the rocker cover gaskets
I get rather anal about sealing the gaskets and also like a smear of hylomar on the outer face of seals
Seal faces need to be clean and smooth many are not
Rocker gadkets need sealing to the rocker cover before a smear of Hyloma on the head face then in order tighten down to torque and leave to set
The 2 bolts and load spreaders on the side of the front can tower cam pully end have a vertical adjustment so are done last after horizontal bolts are torqued down

Overtightening the cam cover bolts often makes the leak worse due to splitting the gasket around the bolt holes .Later Pinto engines , Sierra etc used a much wider gasket with a matching cam cover and spreader plates instead of washers . When the engine was rebuilt were the oil seals lubricated?

Yeah, all seals were lubricated and carefully installed, hence why they didnt leak the first time i started the engine. I didnt overtighten the rocker cover bolts but did nip them up a bit as they did seem quite loose. I'm gonna check both the camshaft seal and gasket, maybe both are leaking


thanks!