59ab, been driving it around town lightly for the last few months. Havent taken it more than 20 miles on one trip. I noticed it leaked oil, but not too bad. I recently took a 215 mile trip south to Costa Mesa and realized the problem was worse than expected. IN that trip alone, I went through 4 GALLONS (yes, GALLONS!) of oil. If I had known the oil leak was that bad, there is NO WAY I would have taken the trip. By the time I realized it, I was about 75 miles into it. Oh well. Got home from the trip and put a new pan gasket, one piece front seal, and timing cover gasket hoping to fix the leaky issue. I just drove it to work tonight (about 15 miles) and it ran fine. Once I got out of the car I checked to see if anything was leaking. YEP! The breather on the bottom of the pan was leaking really bad. Decent puddle after about 5 mins. Im about half a quart low on oil now too. Also, the riveted dipstick holder was leaking a bit. What the heck would cause this? One thing im doing thats a no-no (I know, I need to fix it) is that im NOT running a breather at the back of the manifold. I need to fab a tube that will fit and just havent done it yet. Could this cause the leaking somehow? Im stumped. This car is about to get pushed in the corner and forgotten for a few years. Im spent....
Dude, you answered your own problem. If the only crank case vent is the oil pan, The only way out is thru the oil pan breather and thats the air intake port. Remember the engine back side of a piston is just like an air pump plus compression blowby has no place to escape. With out a vent you are forcing the crankcase pressure out the pan ,this pressurized air picks up all the spray oil particles in the crankcase and drags them out the breather port creating an oil fog. The faster you go the longer you drive the more oil is forced out. The gaskets probably weren't bad in the first place, if you would have installed an upper vent or road draft tube you would haven't gone thru all that oil.
No, I just dont have a breather on it. Its a stock manifold with a stock fuel pump. The motor is just too close to put a breather tube on it unless i fab a swan style tube. This motor is used, but cleaned up and gone through. Replaced most gaskets and seals.
breather is your problem.you need one on top. mine was close to my fire wall and i took and old harley exhaust and got a good bend out of it and made a cool and chrome breather tube .billy
when you say the breather is not on it, do you also mean that there is no hole for a top breather? Can pressure actually get out of the motor other than from the lower filter?
I dealt with a similar issue with a 302 in my '65 Mustang. It was building up t.o much pressure and pushing oil out of the dipstick and anywhere else it could find. It turned out to be a blown head gasket.
it will weep a little i have some white scotch brite pad cut into srips in the oil pan breather pocket area.helps with the mist splatter.
Im not sure if this is getting across. THE BREATHER IS NOT THERE, BUT THE FUEL PUMP HOLE IS. Whats the difference between having a breather attached to the fuel pump stand or not? Imagine a stock flathead with a stock fuel pump stand, with no breather attached to the top, just a hole. Will attaching the breather make that big of a difference as far as the leaking pan breather is concerned?
Well that's your problem. If you have an 8ba engine or earlier and are using the 8ba style right angle fuel pump mount and a manifold with no breather provision the only way the crankcase pressure can relieve itself is thru the vent in the pan or the dipstick hole. If you are using an 8ba style intake it should have a provision for a road draft tube at the front of the manifold. If you have an earlier manifold that vents thru the fuel pump stand you will have to swap for that fuel pump stand. For the engine to vent correctly it must have a port at the top and bottom.
I have a stock 59a intake. Just dont have the actual BREATHER on it cause I havent fabbed up a new swan neck to clear the firewall. I guess my question is, what would cause exessive oil leakage from the pan breather?
I follow you now. My mistake. The amount of oil you have leaking out seems to me there is a problem bigger than being fixed by restricting the oil pan vent. Could it be air pressure is entering the open hole when driving? I have the breather closed off on the back of my motor because of the firewall and have a hole drilled in the front area of the intake and have a breather tube from an 8BA stuck in it. Works fine for me. Neal
So are you using the 8ba right angle fuel pump stand with no breather provision or the 35-48 fuel pump stand with the big hole and tube stuck in the top?
Also, is the FRONT vertical pipe in the valley in place, and while you are in there, you need the little snap in plates along the floor and the rear inner stack surrounding where the pushrod is or was. Too much oil flies around in the valley without the factory baffles. and the hole for the front pipe drains right into the oil pan vent, which is why that vertical pipe exists.
The 35-48. Right now, I just have a screen over the top to keep stuff out for now. I just havent made a neck yet.
Something else that could be an issue. If your dipstick is the wrong length, you might be adding too much oil to the engine. They were designed to hold 4 qts (w/o oil filter) and 5 qts (with oil filter)....although I think 4-1/2 qts with filter is just about right. The breather issues are obviously something to check. Plus the lack of the internal baffles in the valve galley.
Well, I thought of that too. BUT, im leaking oil REAL bad and my pressure drops after a 30 min drive. Im loosin oil too fast.
I know you said you re-did the gaskets and such, but did you ever perform a compression or leak down test? If you don't have the top breather blocked off, and are losing enough oil in half an hour to affect the oil pressure, I would start wondering about the condition of the motor. It doesn't take long to check that stuff out, and it will probably be in your best interest to make sure you aren't looking at something bigger than needing an extra breather tube. And since you are saying it is covered in a screen and not blocked off, the likelihood of it being the breather is a bit less.
Oh,You mean you dont have a breather CAP installed. Well the chore girl in the tube works fine if the oil was forced out the top but you should still have a cap to prevent water from entering the engine thru the open breather port. To determine air flow thru the engine just start the engine up and see if you can feel any slight air pressure flow out the breather, make sure that you feel air coming out the breather, not the air from the fan. If you have an air flow your crank case is vented. Too much air flow would signify a compression leak, none would indicate something plugged up. Now if you are leaking this much oil and have replaced all the gaskets on the pan and the timing cover you are going to have to determine where the oil is actually leaking from. Is it from a hole in the pan, a bad gasket or a crank seal? Since you replaced all the gaskets where is the area of the leak? If it is just at the breather canister in the front of the pan, this is above the oil pan level so it should not be draining out from there. If it was being burned in the cylinders like bad rings or a cracked piston it would show up in the exhaust. If the plugs are not oil fowled that will eliminate those options. So the next place to look is for a specific leak area. Is this in the front of the engine or rear? If it is in the rear of the block make sure that oil pressure block off plug is not loose, if it is oil will run down the rear portion of the block. In a flathead your oil pressure will drop in the 15-20 lb range when heated up. So if you think that because you have low oil pressure you are loosing oil that's not the case and as posted before by you can over fill the crankcase and have the same results creating an oil leak when there is none. Like fortyfordguy, Over filling causes the crank shaft weights to hit the oil and whip it like an egg beater causing the misting and aeration of the oil and lower oil pressure and push the missed oil out the pan breather.
Try doing a compresion test of all the cylinders while the engine is hot. What you have going on sounds like "A" the engine is total junk. or "B" there is a bad piston or several that are causing an exssevive amount of oil to be pumped outof the block. IE, broken rings, broken ring lands or burnt piston. A breather tube with the cap off will not cause it to be as bad as you say it is. You need to look deeper.
Thanks for the info guys. ****, the leak is coming directly out of the oil pan breather on the p***enger side. I just checked it right now, and its reading half a quart low, and now the front of the pan is all oily again. When I just got off work, it had a pretty healthy puddle underneath it. Mainly on the vent (p***) side. I just changed the front seal and pan gasket in an attempt to keep it from leaking so bad, now its back to square one. I know the oil PSI will drop when its warm, but when your on the highway doing 65, it shouldnt read 5 pounds. Then when you get off it drops to zero! Thats cause i was leaking so bad. Once its full, it runs about 20-25 PSI going down the highway. Then as its leaking, it slowly drops. What PSI should my cylinders read when I do a compression test?
707, i just went over the block mating surface at this area . The only access to the vent cover is by a hole in the pan rail of the block. This is far above the natural oil line of the engine and the only area where oil can leak out the pan. Since you have clarified everything regarding venting the engine the next scenario has already been proposed , that being you are over filling the engine with oil and this is causing it to aerate. Since this is a closed unit the only areas that the pan can leak with out a hole is at the seal corners and at the breather. If you over fill an engine with oil it will churn that oil like ****er and the oil pressure drops like a rock I know first hand as I did it once and it is mess. Just to check, this is the total length of a 59a dip stick tube is 8 1/4" so first start here to check that you are no over filling your engine. Drain the oil and put in 4 qts of new 30w oil. Let stand 5 minutes, Pull the dip stick and check to see the level of the oil to the full mark on the stick. The oil level should be below the dip stick full line by about 1/4", now add the final quart and that should bring it up to level capacity. Take a file and mark where the level is for 5 qts on the dip stick. If you have just been adding oil to the full mark on the stick who knows if you have the correct dip stick or extension tube and in reality you may have been over filling the engine with oil. Thats about the only way you can pump oil out the pan vent. Keep us posted on the mystery.
Here's something way out there to consider. I once picked up a project car with a "rebuilt" flathead that had never been fired. I checked everything over and fired it up - minimal oil pressure and oil running out the right front pan vent (sound familiar?). I posted some questions here and fordbarn, got some good advice, and tried a few things to find the problem. Finally pulled the intake and the problem was obvious - the "expert" that had rebuilt the engine left the oil pressure relief valve out. Oil was shooting out the oil pressure relief hole, hitting the bottom of the intake, and splashing over & down the breather standpipe in the valley. Obviously your relief valve is in place or you would have no oil pressure, but possibly the relief valve plug cap is cracked/loose/etc. It's a long shot, but you have something way out of the ordinary wrong here.
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