Suggestions to pinpoint oil leak spots

What I do is get a cardboard box and break it down and put it under the engine after a ride.

It was a great help discovering I didn’t have my axle boots tight enough.  

As I’ve posted before, I generally get a quarter-size spot under each valve cover and a half dollar-sized spot under the sump plate.

I can live with that. I’d rather loose a drop or two of oil than strip out a sump plate stud.

If you truly have oil coming out of your dipstick I’d wonder if you weren’t overfilling your engine.

@dlearl476 posted:

If you truly have oil coming out of your dipstick I’d wonder if you weren’t overfilling your engine.

Good point i was thinking the same thing. The last oil change was preformed from the last owner. Let me check the levels now.

When you check the oil level on the dipstick, try to aim for a level mid-way between the "low" and "full" marks - Not all the way up to "full".  These engines seem to like that amount to reduce some oil seepage from the dipstick and elsewhere.

Also, and especially on a stock engine, there is no oil seal at the pulley end of the crankshaft, only a clever washer on the crankshaft inside of the case that catches oil that would come out behind the crankshaft pulley at the bottom and it slings the oil off by centrifugal force back in to the engine crankcase.  It's an effective but not necessarily complete because it still leaks a little by design (crankcase pressure forcing oil out means no dust or dirt is getting in).  

There is a hole in the engine tin just below the crankshaft pulley to let whatever oil gets past the slinger drip onto the ground (or garage floor).  That's why some people put an oil mat or pan or some sort of rug with plastic under it under the engine in their garage.  

If you are expecting a totally leak free air cooled engine in your speedster you probably will be disappointed.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

When you check the oil level on the dipstick, try to aim for a level mid-way between the "low" and "full" marks - Not all the way up to "full".  These engines seem to like that amount to reduce some oil seepage from the dipstick and elsewhere.

Also, and especially on a stock engine, there is no oil seal at the pulley end of the crankshaft, only a clever washer on the crankshaft inside of the case that catches oil that would come out behind the crankshaft pulley at the bottom and it slings the oil off by centrifugal force back in to the engine crankcase.  It's an effective but not necessarily complete because it still leaks a little by design (crankcase pressure forcing oil out means no dust or dirt is getting in).  

There is a hole in the engine tin just below the crankshaft pulley to let whatever oil gets past the slinger drip onto the ground (or garage floor).  That's why some people put an oil mat or pan or some sort of rug with plastic under it under the engine in their garage.  

If you are expecting a totally leak free air cooled engine in your speedster you probably will be disappointed.

Thanks for the details. I have 3 other American hot rods, so oil spots are normal in my garage haha. It’s the small smoke of the headers that is killing me

this is my 1st VW , I may be over reving the motor also as it seems 1st gear is very low lol..

@dlearl476 posted:

If you truly have oil coming out of your dipstick I’d wonder if you weren’t overfilling your engine.

Ok your correct, seems to be over flowed. With engine cold the oil line is well over the 2nd line….question is how to get some of this oil out lol… any ideas without dropping the pan?

Without dropping the pan?  An oil extractor pump for outboards (Topsider is one).

If the oil drain plate has a drain plug in the middle, you could just loosen it and drain some of the oil.  Otherwise, you'll have to loosen the acorn nuts on the circumference of the plate.  Two things to remember: 1) the gaskets may not seal as well after draining some of the oil and; 2) those acorn nuts are only supposed to be re-torqued to 5 ft-lbs.

Yeah, about those acorn nuts: DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN! Choke up on the wrench: fingers as close to the nut as possible, and use two fingers ONLY.

The thing you're calling a "flywheel" is actually the crank pulley. The flywheel is on the other end where the motor is bolted to the transmission.

Smoke on the headers is usually caused by leaking valve cover gaskets.  When they leak the oil follows the cover edge down to the bottom and then drips directly on the header tube.  The covers that use a big spring “bale” to hold them on seem to work best, but I’ve had good luck with the bolt-on style from CB Perf.   Other makes of bolt-on covers seem to leak, too, uNless you figure them out and make them seal, somehow.

There is almost as much discussion about proper valve cover gaskets as there is for oil.  There are two types of gaskets:  Basic cork, which is wooden in color, and “composite” which is black and partially synthetic.  Cork seems to work better for many people, especially newbies.  I’ve had good luck with both, but would stick with cork if you can get ‘em.

The trick is to get the gasket moist before installing so that it swells a tiny bit and then crushes slightly when installed.  Some people use Permatex RTV on them, others (me) just smear them with regular automotive grease and let it absorb for 30 mins or so to moisten and then wipe off the excess and install.  

Either way, make sure there are no puckers all along the edge and snug them in and that’s it.  Pull the bale up and latch it (long screwdriver as a lever works well) or tighten the cover bolts hand tight and then one more turn.  Make sure you use new o-rings on the bolts.  I make them from 5/16” fuel hose or you can use real 5/16” ID by 3/16” or so o-rings.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

Smoke on the headers is usually caused by leaking valve cover gaskets.  

... or more likely from being pushed out the crank pulley. There's no seal back there, only a "slinger" and some grooves in the pulley - meant to meet with the oil, have a nice cuppa tea, and gently encourage it to consider going back to the sump. It doesn't work under the best of circumstances, and flings oil all over the back half of the car if you are overfilled or over-pressurized.

This is exhibit "C" in today's lesson: "why the oiling system was not the finest 15 minutes the Sainted German Engineers ever spent on a problem".

The impossibly small amount of oil these things carry (3-1/2 quarts of love, without an extended sump) is a thing very, very difficult to wrap your head around if you are used to anything besides a motorcycle or a Briggs and Stratton small engine. The oil level is absolutely critical, which is ironic, given that they leak oil and have no valve-stem seals (and therefore burn it).

Your typical small block Cheebie, by means of comparison, has an oil pan that'll hold about 2 gallons of oil and operates pretty much the same if it's two quarts low or a quart and a half high. That 3-1/2 quart band-o-fuzz, is the entire oil-system capacity of a stock T1 VW. Don't let it worry you, but that T1 VW really doesn't HAVE an oil pan, just a thimble-full of oil sloshing around in the bottom of the case. OK, so maybe it should worry you.

Check the oil level often. I recommend being OCD about it, but that's just me. If you aren't waking up in the night in a cold sweat, you probably aren't doing it right.

But what is right?

Keep in mind your dipstick was made with less pride than you might imagine by the lowest bidder in a mud hut somewhere in east Asia. The marks may (or may not) indicate the actual appropriate optimal oil level. You might want to run the level a little low (to keep oil from blowing all over the engine compartment from the lack of a crank seal), but not too low. The Sainted German Engineers assumed the average owner could handle it. They were wrong about other things as well, but nothing quite so important.

We talk a lot about what kind of oil to run, and very little about how much. Suffice it to say, enough of "whatever's on sale at Pep Boys" beats not enough of some secret sauce handed down from God, and delivered to your garage by means of a case of the elixir sitting on a velvet pillow held aloft on a litter carried by a hundred eunuchs. Every single time.

I'd recommend getting an oil pressure gauge, although most VW/replica guys don't think they are needed for some mysterious reason. What is unknown can't be a problem, apparently. All the real estate in the gauge cluster is taken up with the really important stuff, like a gas gauge that works about like a Magic 8-Ball, so you'll need to get a gauge that hangs off the bottom of your dash like that set you put on your '68 Nova back in high-school. Regardless, It seems to me that making sure you never starve the engine of oil during hard running or driving with verve and purpose is probably at least as important as trying to discern or guess what a petulant gas gauge is trying to hide from you.

Or not. Maybe you really just want to buy a fancier lawn mower engine (one with a designer label), and starving it of oil is the easiest way to accomplish that task with the last chance of failure (you know, to accomplish the goal - your engine will certainly fail if you run it out of oil). Mrs. 356_2cool2slow needn't know it was user error that brought about this state of affairs, it'll be our little secret.

So, to summarize: you need enough oil, but not too much. The dipstick is unreliable, and you probably have no gauge to tell you if you don't have enough oil. The only real way to know if you have too much oil is if it pukes all over the back of the car, and your driveway earns you a visit from the EPA hazmat team. Once you find the Goldilocks-Zone for oil, your engine will leak it or burn it, so you need to know where on the dipstick the proper level is, and check it like you're watching your IRA portfolio. You'll find yourself metering oil into the engine more carefully than you measured out your toddler's liquid Tylenol - adding an eighth of a quart every third fill-up, or some such thing.

Easy-peasy - nuthun' to it.

Oh, and welcome to the madness.

In addition to cork and composite gaskets, there are also rubber and silicone.  Then there are valve covers that use a c-channel gasket and others that use an o-ring.

I agree with Stan. I can't sleep without an oil pressure gauge. I drilled my dash for two gauges to make it look even, but didn't need anything special in the 2nd position.

@Stan Galat posted:

... or more likely from being pushed out the crank pulley. There's no seal back there, only a "slinger" and some grooves in the pulley - meant to meet with the oil, have a nice cuppa tea, and gently encourage it to consider going back to the sump. It doesn't work under the best of circumstances, and flings oil all over the back half of the car if you are overfilled or over-pressurized.

This is exhibit "C" in today's lesson: "why the oiling system was not the finest 15 minutes the Sainted German Engineers ever spent on a problem".

The impossibly small amount of oil these things carry (3-1/2 quarts of love, without an extended sump) is a thing very, very difficult to wrap your head around if you are used to anything besides a motorcycle or a Briggs and Stratton small engine. The oil level is absolutely critical, which is ironic, given that they leak oil and have no valve-stem seals (and therefore burn it).

Your typical small block Cheebie, by means of comparison, has an oil pan that'll hold about 2 gallons of oil and operates pretty much the same if it's two quarts low or a quart and a half high. That 3-1/2 quart band-o-fuzz, is the entire oil-system capacity of a stock T1 VW. Don't let it worry you, but that T1 VW really doesn't HAVE an oil pan, just a thimble-full of oil sloshing around in the bottom of the case. OK, so maybe it should worry you.

Check the oil level often. I recommend being OCD about it, but that's just me. If you aren't waking up in the night in a cold sweat, you probably aren't doing it right.

But what is right?

Keep in mind your dipstick was made with less pride than you might imagine by the lowest bidder in a mud hut somewhere in east Asia. The marks may (or may not) indicate the actual appropriate optimal oil level. You might want to run the level a little low (to keep oil from blowing all over the engine compartment from the lack of a crank seal), but not too low. The Sainted German Engineers assumed the average owner could handle it. They were wrong about other things as well, but nothing quite so important.

We talk a lot about what kind of oil to run, and very little about how much. Suffice it to say, enough of "whatever's on sale at Pep Boys" beats not enough of some secret sauce handed down from God, and delivered to your garage by means of a case of the elixir sitting on a velvet pillow held aloft on a litter carried by a hundred eunuchs. Every single time.

I'd recommend getting an oil pressure gauge, although most VW/replica guys don't think they are needed for some mysterious reason. What is unknown can't be a problem, apparently. All the real estate in the gauge cluster is taken up with the really important stuff, like a gas gauge that works about like a Magic 8-Ball, so you'll need to get a gauge that hangs off the bottom of your dash like that set you put on your '68 Nova back in high-school. Regardless, It seems to me that making sure you never starve the engine of oil during hard running or driving with verve and purpose is probably at least as important as trying to discern or guess what a petulant gas gauge is trying to hide from you.

Or not. Maybe you really just want to buy a fancier lawn mower engine (one with a designer label), and starving it of oil is the easiest way to accomplish that task with the last chance of failure (you know, to accomplish the goal - your engine will certainly fail if you run it out of oil). Mrs. 356_2cool2slow needn't know it was user error that brought about this state of affairs, it'll be our little secret.

So, to summarize: you need enough oil, but not too much. The dipstick is unreliable, and you probably have no gauge to tell you if you don't have enough oil. The only real way to know if you have too much oil is if it pukes all over the back of the car, and your driveway earns you a visit from the EPA hazmat team. Once you find the Goldilocks-Zone for oil, your engine will leak it or burn it, so you need to know where on the dipstick the proper level is, and check it like you're watching your IRA portfolio. You'll find yourself metering oil into the engine more carefully than you measured out your toddler's liquid Tylenol - adding an eighth of a quart every third fill-up, or some such thing.

Easy-peasy - nuthun' to it.

Oh, and welcome to the madness.

My god miss Stan  lol https://www.speedsterowners.com/member/stan.galat

Did you write for the New York post lol

oil pressure is already on the dash and looks good..

All good points .. will check in the am

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@356_2cool2slow posted:

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...the oil line is well over the 2nd line….question is how to get some of this oil out...

With a VW Type 1, the easiest way to drop the level below the 'full' mark is to drive it a hundred miles.

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I think I would smell the oil also !  Distinct gasoline smell and a notable thinness of the viscosity may suggest that you have a gas leak into the oil system............Bruce