I went out to take a little cruise this morning to check out the performance of a jet change in my 44 Webers. I didn't make it out of my driveway ! While it was idling to warm up i pushed it out of my garage and out to the front of my driveway. All the way out , I discovered, that I had a big trail of engine oil. i shut it off and watched. it wasn't from all the oil hoses that go all over the place to plumb in the cooler or the filter. It was from the doghouse oil cooler ! I suspected that i had blown out one of the "dounut' grommets between this cooler and the crankcase. What a pain in the a-s to remove everything to get to this mess! I think it would have been easier to remove the entire engine but after all the pains I took to make sure the engine compartment was sealed up to prevent any air from entering other than through the Hibachi Grill I thought it would be easier. Now, I think it's 50/50.....live and learn!.... The problem was this. The oil cooler was an aftermarket unit and when I installed it i noticed that it was not perpendicular to the crankcase. This would make the fan shroud sit cockeyed (leaning Backwards in this case) and not allow the alternator to mount properly so that the fan belt was not aligned between the Alt. and the crank pulley. Since I believe that proper alignment is required here to insure that the fan-belt stays on at 6000rpm or so, I shimmed (with washers) the oil cooler back to a vertical (perpendicular) position. What this did was reduce the mechanical "squeeze" of those two silicone donuts between the crankcase and the oil cooler....FAILURE RIGHT THERE !!
It happened after 300 miles into my break-in period of 500 miles.....What a friggen mess!!!! Upward and onward.....
This is just info so...hopefully...you don't try to do the same thing.
Let us know if you're successful.
