Tips For Preventing Oil Leaks?

[econti]

Cool. So with the Permatex black, do you do the thing where you install the pan with the bolts finger-tight, wait a day and then torque them? I know that some of those things recommend weird procedures.

I did something similar, let it cure until it was well tacky, then installed, tightened a bit, then after another half hour or so did a full tighten

[Vanilla Gorilla]

I didn't wait to torque the bolts when I did my pan recently. Assembled everything while it was still tacky.

[bmwman91]

Alrighty, I got it all back together last night and it seems like the oil leak issue is either gone, or 99% gone. So far I have just replaced the gasket and o-rings for the oil filter housing and will wait on the oil pan gasket. I had thought that the oil pan was leaking because there is oil all over it and around it, but I am thinking that the leak in the filter housing was just spreading all over the place. It's always amazing how far oil will spread when it leaks, and having the cooling fan blowing it around probably does not help.

A couple of hours after driving around last night, I only found 3 small drops of oil under the car, and it is probably just from the crazy amount of old oil that is all over everything from the leak I fixed (time to go get the engine steam cleaned). Normally there would be a small puddle or a lot of large drops. I am thinking that the reason this has been leaking since day-one is that the gasket & o-ring sealing surfaces on the filter housing and timing case were painted (and I didn't notice since the gray/silver paint is damn close to the color of bare aluminum). When I was cleaning off all of those sealing surfaces, I went through half a roll of paper towels, a pint of acetone and probably half of my brain cells lol...acetone works great for cleaning stuff, but damn is it smelly!


Other notes:
I went with the Permatex High-Tack Spray-A-Gasket sealer on the OEM paper gasket too. I like it because it is very easy to apply a thin, uniform coat simply because it is an aerosol product. Lay a couple of coats on your gasket and let it sit in open air for 10 minutes to let the solvent evaporate, then install it...done! I'll report back in a few months (or sooner if it starts leaking again).

The six M6 bolts that hold the filter housing on are hard to find the proper torque spec for. I saw everything from 70 in-lbs to 210 in-lbs in different discussions online. A thread here in r3v made 120 in-lbs sound like a good torque, and it "feels" like that is the max that the little M6 bolts (and aluminum timing case threads) will tolerate. Lots of people seem to have had these bolts break on them.

[///M42 sport]

interested in knowing what sealant does the job for oil and is not a pain to remove

[varg]

The six M6 bolts that hold the filter housing on are hard to find the proper torque spec for. I saw everything from 70 in-lbs to 210 in-lbs in different discussions online. A thread here in r3v made 120 in-lbs sound like a good torque, and it "feels" like that is the max that the little M6 bolts (and aluminum timing case threads) will tolerate. Lots of people seem to have had these bolts break on them.

I used the ol' distal radioulnar torque wrench and had no issues.

[maxmonster]

Dirko!!

[bmwman91]

interested in knowing what sealant does the job for oil and is not a pain to remove

I have used the Permatex High Tack Spray-A-Gasket stuff in the past for other things and it cleans off fairly easily with acetone. The technical data sheet on the Permatex site says that it is fully oil resistant. Honestly, I think that one of the major factors, if it is not THE major factor, in getting a good no-leak seal is to have all of the gasket surfaces be immaculate. No dirt, no dust, no residual oil or other contaminants. In many cases this can mean a TON of prep work to get rid of old gasket sealer, baked chunks of old gasket, etc, which might be part of why so many people have leaks after replacing a gasket...after 2 hours of scraping people get tired and say "good enough" and put it all together. Goodness knows that I have been there before!

I used the ol' distal radioulnar torque wrench and had no issues.

Yeah that is my usual method. Since I really really did not want this to leak, or to mess up a bolt or threads, I decided to do it the "right" way.

[bmwman91]

As promised in a previous post, here I am reporting back a few months later. So far I am not leaking ANY oil, or at least not enough to leave drips in my garage or driveway. So it would seem that all of the mess was in fact coming from the oil filter housing, and its o-ring in particular.

I still seem to lose around a quart every 2000 miles, BUT, I think that it is more due to the fact that the car only sees short trips around town and I drive the snot out of it every chance I get. Based on my OBC, my average speed per tank is typically about 24MPH. It is probably also because I opted for MM's higher compression design in which they added a couple extra thousandths of clearance between the rings and walls to accommodate the extra thermal expansion, which means that it does burn a little more oil during warm-up. Seeing as how it is not dripping oil and it runs like a bat out of hell, I'm cool with this lol.

[Sladek]

As promised in a previous post, here I am reporting back a few months later. So far I am not leaking ANY oil, or at least not enough to leave drips in my garage or driveway. So it would seem that all of the mess was in fact coming from the oil filter housing, and its o-ring in particular.

I still seem to lose around a quart every 2000 miles, BUT, I think that it is more due to the fact that the car only sees short trips around town and I drive the snot out of it every chance I get. Based on my OBC, my average speed per tank is typically about 24MPH. It is probably also because I opted for MM's higher compression design in which they added a couple extra thousandths of clearance between the rings and walls to accommodate the extra thermal expansion, which means that it does burn a little more oil during warm-up. Seeing as how it is not dripping oil and it runs like a bat out of hell, I'm cool with this lol.

going through my recently acquired 318is and trying to resolve the oil leaks. so it seems that the Permatex High Tack Spray-A-Gasket is the way to go on the paper gaskets. im replacing the upper and lower oil pans/gaskets and the oil filter housing gaskets. the upper pan was cracked but based on engine grime it seems to be leaking from all of these so doing it all while its apart.

how quick would you say this tacks up? and are you spraying the housing then laying the gasket then spraying the top of the gasket?

im torn on whether to use sealant at all or not, also considering hondabond

[bmwman91]

I let the Permatex spray a gasket stuff set up for 5 minutes usually. You just need to let the solvents flash off.

I never spray it onto the housings and stuff since it makes a big mess. I hang the gasket with a piece of wire through a bolt hole or something and spray both sides, and then touch-up where the wire was after taking it off. I know it isn't how it says to use it, but I have never had an issue.