As part of my restoration project, I pulled the engine and tranny (clutch needed to be replaced anyway). I stripped the engine down to the short block and I am reassemblying with all new gaskets, o-rings, hoses, OMP lines (teflon mod), etc. I just put the front cover back on (heeding all of the eccentric shaft thrust bearing warnings while the lock nut was removed), trimmed the new gasket at the bottom, and I noticed that the exhaust side of the bottom of the front cover protrudes ever so slightly from the adjoining iron. In other words, the mating surface for the oil pan is not flush.

I did loosen everything and tried adjusting the position of the front cover to make it flush and then retorquing the bolts, but the round alignment "rods" or "cylinders" (whatever you call them) don't leave enough clearance to adjust much. The protrusion isn't much... less than 0.01" by my guess. It looks flush but you can definitely feel that it isn't. When I install the oil pan, I'm going to use Hylomar as a sealant... both sides of the pan gasket as per the FSM. Hylomar supposedly can successfully seal up to 0.01" gaps.

Do you think that will be OK? If not, any recommendations? Thanks!

 

skip the hylomar and the gasket, and use silicon.

the factory uses silicon with no gasket.

 

Dittos. SCREW hylomar. Use RTV. Use hylomar when rebuilding and mating the rotor housings to the front, intermediate and rear side housings.

 

Thanks for the advice. I take it then that the problem I have with the front cover not being flush with the iron will be OK with an RTV sealant? I noticed that this engine previously had a pretty good oil leak in the same area, although it was hard to tell if it was from the OMP or the oil pan.

On a side note, I have noticed that people either love or hate Hylomar. Even when it comes down to the rebuilding shops, some highly recommend the stuff while others go to great lengths to steer everyone away from it. So far, I like the stuff. I have literally spent about 20 hours scraping off the rock hard stuff that was used previously on this engine. Removing epoxy would've been easier.

 

I meant to say RTV plus a gasket. Home made gasket would work with RTV just fine, or buy a pan gasket and use a smear of RTV on the gasket. The RTV acts as a release agent when eventually remove the pan again.

In other words don't gob it on. Use a common sense approach and take into consideration "squeeze out".

Hylomar is good for the mating engine parts. Even P@W uses it on building up the gear boxes on their engines.

 

Thanks, HAILERS. I was going to use a gasket anyway because I already purchased one weeks ago. Is there a particular RTV that you recommend?

 

RTV Black works great for me.

 

I only use Hylomar on soft seals and o-rings that come in contact with coolant.
This means Hylomar is primarily used on the water jacket o-rings on a rebuild.
I don't use Hylomar on (flat) gaskets.
I use engine oil on soft seals and o-rings that come in contact with engine oil.


-Ted