couple newby questions

[bevans6]

On the oil on the towed vehicle thing - I got it bad too!  I was convinced that my engine was burning oil and the junk on the car was from the exhaust, because it was a lot worse on the drivers side.  I built and installed a stack to put the exhaust 11 feet in the air - solved the early morning smoke in the campsite problem, but not the oil on the car problem.  I have since decided that I probably have a pretty normal engine but it has some leaks while running at highway speed that I can't find.  I use about a gallon every 600 - 700 miles, and a think that is about how much is on my car at the end of the day!

I reconfigured my bed room to two twin beds, so I now have decent access to the hatches of the rear of the engine, and I am about to dive in there and start tightening bolts, looking for leaking accessory drives, and all of that.  The blower was replaces a while ago, so I suspect leaking gaskets on it as well.  Hopefully I will find something easy!  I also suspect my alternator of leaking somewhere, but on a 5C there is very little room to get in there and look.  I am also hoping to put a full width bumper flap on and see if that helps.

I carry spray bottles of Simple Green or the equivalent, and a bag of rags, and I can clean up the car in 20 minutes and be good to go.

Brian

[RickB]

Use your ir gun on the inlet and outlet of the thermostats and the water pump when its hot. The smaller pulley makes a big difference and I disconnected my shutterstats for the summer ( when you disconnect them they stay open)
That motors too hot for my liking if youre a good mechanic and have time pull the thermostats and see what temp they are supposed to open and boil them to see if they are workimg properly. The airflow through the radiators should suck a piece of paper out of your hand from a few inches away and hold it up to the screen in front of the radiators if your system is working properly.
Good luck
Rick

[robertglines1]

I had oil on car...serviced air box drain ck valves and reduced it by 90%..take apart and clean gunk out..should be open at idle and closed above 1100 rpm approx...also make sure vents on valve covers are working ;they build up with gunk and cause crankcase pressure that pushes oil out...take off and wash in solvent..no pressure less oil leaks...just some suggestions..  Bob

[RickB]

Checking the blower seals is pretty simple take the air filter and intake horn off and look down into the vanes, they should be clean and not pitted or scratched and overall the intake to the blower should not be oily and dirty. It is my understanding that the rack tubes would probably be the culprit as the blower seals failing will end up coming out of your spitter tubes and not pooling. Clean the motor real well and then watch the rack tubes ( they are the little hoses with clamps that run from the blower to the block on either side of the blower) for leaks

[thomasinnv]

Checking the blower seals is pretty simple take the air filter and intake horn off and look down into the vanes, they should be clean and not pitted or scratched and overall the intake to the blower should not be oily and dirty. It is my understanding that the rack tubes would probably be the culprit as the blower seals failing will end up coming out of your spitter tubes and not pooling. Clean the motor real well and then watch the rack tubes ( they are the little hoses with clamps that run from the blower to the block on either side of the blower) for leaks

I pressure washed the engine really good before we left OK.  At first i thought head gaskets because it appeared the oil was coming out from between the head and block, but after further inspection i found that the oil is coming out from under the blower and running down the block and coming out where the head meets the block.  I pulled the topside engine access from inside the bus and looked at the top rear of the engine.  there are copious amounts of oil, fresh oil, sitting on top of the block right under the rear of the blower.  the big hose looking thing (maybe 3" or so diameter) that goes between the blower and bell housing looks to be in good shape and not leaking.  if i had to guess i would say the oil looks to be coming out where the blower sits on top of the block on both front and rear of the blower.  gaskets??  so do i understand that blower seals would be something internal and not external?

[thomasinnv]

hey fella's...is a blower r&r something that can be done in a day or two while parked out in the woods?  I'm about 400 miles from where we plan on parking for a few days close to the grand canyon.  When we leave there i've got over another thousand miles to out next stop and would rather not keep dumping money (read oil) all over the pickup.  I've got lotsa tools.

[RickB]

Blower seals are actually at the ends of the blower vanes inside the blower housing but if you ask anybody on the board we all agree that our leaks are really hard to trace more often than not we replace some thing that doesn't seem to be leaking and we find that it was. a good friend and i both changed out our air compressors and voila! my bus doesn't leak (except into the spitter box tubes i made) at all while running

gumpy I can hear you laughing and thinking:

the key word I left out is yet!

These things just leak if we don't like it we'll all have to get 4 strokes i guess

[RickB]

I wouldn't try it without a clean shop and truthfully you can find them rebuilt for around $200 more than the kit will cost you. I have never rebuilt one. I had a shop do my doomed 8V92 this spring and watched about half of the process. It seems like there's alot of inside knowledge and special tools to rebuilding them.

Could we all learn to run the rack? I bet most of us could. But would we do it as well as someone who has done it a thousand times and gained all that hands on experience and is it worth our time in hours? That depends on each individual.


My advice would be to limp and leak your way home and tackle it then. I do think you could disconnect and tee off your shutterstats and replace or check your thermostats but your gonna have to drain about half the coolant to do it.


Rick

[bevans6]

The main thing about removing the blower is that the governor is part of the front housing, so you have to take the governor off.  that pretty much means you have to set it up again from scratch, or at least go through the checks that it is set up right, and then you follow on to running the rack, setting the idle and no-load speeds, and all of that.  So my take on it when I thought about taking the blower off was I could get it off no problem, and not a hope of getting it back on and having the engine run right, not without someone who knows what to do to help me.  That said, others have done it.

Brian