G Atsma

If the gaskets are in good shape, no silicone is going to seal it up any better, except of course for the corners.

nine8ss

iTrader: (5)

You might as well buy some stock in silicone if you are using so much that it takes 3-4 hours to clean it off. Holy #$%^

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

Alright hang on. First you have to understand something about the way I post. I make a post to emphasis on certain things, for instance in this case it is the lengthy cleaning process with removing silicone from the gasket. There is a good picture showing the oil pan gasket fully spread. The gasket materials are not hard like the surface of the block, so it is very difficult to scrape by hand with a razor blade. There may be other methods but I tend to use the lowest one i.e. There are air tools, electric tools, etc... but I will generally opt for the one everybody owns: hands and razor blades in this example, this way nobody is excluded at least.

So we put these two basic underlying concepts together: Hands with razor blades + difficult gasket surface and this = impossible to clean gasket. Indeed, I was unable to fully clean every trace of silicone form the oil pan gasket between re-uses. This means there is always going to be some silicone left on the gasket between uses. This is why I emphases 3, 4, 5 hours of cleaning is involved: as the number of hours involved approaches infinity for cleaning the gasket, I am still unable to fully clean the gasket. In other words we can spend a hundred hours trying to fully clean the gasket with naked eye and razor blade by hand, because even after removing all visible traces, there would still be trillions upon trillions of silicone molecules on the surface, I can guarantee you this by the very nature of the fabric of our universe it will be true. This is why I am pushing hours to clean gasket by hand -> infinity and using such a long-scope emphasis, to show a big picture.

Now that we see the 'problems' faced with gasket re-use, lets examine the results and conclusion.

The main thing you should take away from this is that using a new gasket is really the only way to ensure there is no silicone on the gasket, if you don't want any on the gasket for some reason. As long as the surfaces are compatible with silicone there is no reason NOT to use any, except for the difficult hand cleaning issues mentioned or if it will produce harmful byproducts against something you care about. The result is that using a brand new gasket every single time with silicone is the ideal way, but also most expensive way to handle these issues. In conclusion it seems that it is also possible to re-use gasket with previous silicone still on the gasket and it will work fine as well, so 3, 4, 5, infinity hours is not required. Instead, Spend as long as you can afford tospend, but remember time is money and the gasket is only about $15-$20 from ebay. I even had a spare handy but refused to use it because I wanted to see how many times i could get away with re-using the existing gasket. so far I am on number 3, and the previous owner also used it once or twice. So these gaskets are pretty amazing I guess. This is test engine #1 so I am curious about this sort of thing, how many times can I re-use each gasket, etc...

Also its kind of a car joke, to me at least. "how long does it take to clean the silicone from an oil pan gasket... THREE HOURS? try infinity hours" the world may never know

G Atsma

As usual with you, the above 5 paragraphs is much ado about VERY little- silicone sealer that is. The gasket interval to start using silicone besides the corners is NEVER. The gaskets ARE that good. And if they DO get to the point where they MIGHT be compromised, use a new one! I realize you are on a never-ending quest of discovering facts that have already been discovered a few hundred times, but quit bugging the rest of us (just about everyone here) who already are aware of these discoveries.

Darth_V8r

iTrader: (4)

Why not use a vacuum pump instead?

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

Vacuum pump is extra equipment, extra complexity, and requires maintenance, and I would use extra-silicone and perhaps even aftermarket O-ring type seals if I went with a vacuum pump for the same reason I used silicone on my Oil pan gasket, and always will if added protection is welcome. The sealing of the crank case, use of silicone for blower motor > 1k hp builds is something I picked up from wandering around machine shops and asking questions about those blower-type setups which do run vacuum pump. I have nothing to lose by using silicone for extra protection and in my application it is extra important to extra-seal everywhere I have the option opportunity to do so.

G Atsma

Your extraneous use of silicone does nothing to add to the sealing ability of the gaskets in question. Just more goop to clean.

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

thats my decision and it was covered completely in every detail above, I weighted the pros and cons of using silicone.

If I can also add that:
One thing I don't want do, ever, is have to take the engine out to fix a leaking oil pan on a chevy motor. I would rather sell the car. So before you start getting all red in the face over my use of silicone, just remember it isn't you that has to come over and pull the engine out if it leaks.


Find something more important to pick on me over, if you want a real discussion. Is this seriously the only flaw you see in my entire build, the use of a little extra silicone that isn't mentioned in the FSM? I am not perfect, there are other issues we can discuss.

Lets talk about how I am not using any narrowbands, probably never will use any narrowbands, and how everyone on this forum seems obsessed with narrowbands, thinks that there is some kind of "tuning" problem with them. Its an HPtuner phenomenon? More like an OEM implemented program combined with a "group" or "population" of users which have limited experience outside of OEM based ECU tuning. To you guys, I would ask to consider the reason that none of the systems from Haltech, AEM, MS, Bigstuff, Accel, powerFC, Motec, any of the big name manufacturers of stand-alone tuning ECU have the sort of complex algorithm the OEM's use to maintain narrowband operation for the life of the vehicle. This population of individuals seem to be missing is the fact that those systems are designed for people who have no idea they exist. Once you get involved in the ECU and start learning on your own, you should no longer need the computer to auto-adjust, because you have a gauge in front of you and you are aware of the systems in place to control fueling and have a handle on it now. I consider the ECU as a stand-alone and I 'throw the narrowband operation' in the garbage. I don't want to see 14.7 on my gauge anyways, check the videos if you want to see where I like it.

Finally, as the icing on the cake, I might enable the narrowband closed loop feature (could be a year or two or three). When I do this, I will use a programmable analog output from the wideband as such: 0.005 volts @ 15.25:1 and 1.005 volts @ 14.75:1
So, still "trashing" the narrowbands, even though I am using it's algorithms. Furthermore, I have been toying with "lean cruise" in the ECU and I feel like this will also help me avoid using any kind of closed loop, since I can guarantee myself to be on "one side" (lean) I won't need to worry about "coming back towards rich" because the lean cruise shuts itself off under certain conditions. In other words, say I am programmed to run 14.8:1 already, but its a wet rainy day and this throws my a/f off by .2 so I see 14.6. I get on the highway and lean cruise puts me at 15.1 instead of 15.3, win. It shuts off when I get off the highway or whatever and the rain is gone, back at 14.8.

Project GatTagO

iTrader: (7)

I can certainly sympathize with the painful task of pulling an engine for the sake of fixing oil leaks. In fact, I hate oil leaks so much that it was one of the driving decisions in doing a LS swap. That being said, I find the gasket seals on a LS engine are ******* amazing. All of the gaskets are o-ringed and most are solid aluminum. It's just gorgeous. Not like the "good ole days" of shitty cork gaskets, etc...

Anyway...just my two cents...GM actually doesn't use RTV on the four corners where the covers and block meets the pan. The OEM stuff is some kind of secret monkey spunk that never really dries. I am sure the dealer has it.

Andrew

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

If the engine was NA I would have followed FSM. Because this is a turbo engine now, I cannot follow FSM for everything. I chose to use silicone in the nature of "boost" engines, they need superior sealing and superior PCV systems. It may seem trivial and unnecessary but I promise this is one of the big secrets everybody overlooks that has to do with engine longevity and internal cleanliness. Every little "extra" thing adds up, its the attention to details. You can't always say that just because the factory doesn't do it that it isn't necessary; they have been known to cut costs $0.0002 at a time to save, even in the face of increased % risk of some problem. We have to use our own brains to judge the situation and make a call. Silicone isn't going to hurt anything and the gasket is cheap enough to throw away if necessary; win/win

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

I had an opportunity yesterday to pull the trans and inspect the rear main




It was definitely leaking. I was concerned about it maybe being a crack in the oil pan (it was a used pan) but turned out to be ok, just hard brittle seals from 20 years ago I guess.


I wanted to ask if anyone knows what this hole is for:


I noted a bunch of those small holes and just wondering why they are there.


So I get the new flywheel on, after cleaning and drying and installing the new rear main cover of course,



Then I started insulating...




I got a TON like 10 sheets of this insulation materials, of various hardness (some is hard aluminum plate, and some is like a soft fire-retardant materials easy to tear) from the local U-pull-it. I intend to do more and more insulating until the inside of the car is more sound and heat proof from the engine/trans heat/noise. Before the shifter would get so hot you couldn't hold onto it; now it barely even feels warm.


First time using rivnuts. they are not that bad... even the steel ones were not to hard to install. I will be using rivnuts to run new fuel lines and possible brake lines as well, so this was a good experience. I cut aluminum washers from other heat shield materials to help hold the insulation.


I have to stop working on it for a couple weeks because of final exams and projects, but hopefully next month I will be getting more done.
Also, not sure why, but now with the new flexplate the engine feels much stronger. Maybe more smooth, I guess. The old flexplate looks fine; I am not convinced it was cracked. Still, good to know its changed.
I was able to setup the trans-tunnel so that future trans-pulling would be even easier (I made special room around the bellhousing bolts for easy access). So now at least I know I can pull the trans off without taking out the engine, which is a huge bonus, an unexpected one.

Also attached a short video of driving the car right after the repair. Runs out of injector at 5k so thats where I shift (2-3psi of boost).

Project GatTagO

iTrader: (7)

I think the small holes are actually only in the front (and rear) cover gasket and not in the block itself. My guess is they are there for gasket manufacturing purposes. Probably to align the aluminum gasket shell in a die and then the rubber o-ring is injection molded and bonded to the aluminum shell.

Andrew

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

thats really strange. I cant remember now, and I don't have a picture of just the block surface. It was kind of a mess trying to get the silicone (cough) off the oil pan gasket for the eighth time, it took an hour (sniff). Am I getting sick? So yeah, I washed the gasket maybe 125 times over the course of an hour with brake-cleaner, razorblade the surface as absolutely clean and dry as I could get it. The block I do remember the surface being incredible clean already(oily but clean), I just don't remember if there was a hole there. It was kind of a random side question curiosity, I couldn't let it hold me up. I used brake cleaner to dry dry dry everything. I dried the whole back of the engine. Back to the oil pan gasket, then back to the block surface, until I was sure it was clean and dry. I never wanted to do this again . Guess what happens next? After aligning the cover gasket by pushing some bolts through it, I slather the rear cover's oil mating surface with grey silicone and plop it onto the block/oil pan. There is also a tiny bit of silicone between the rear cover gasket and the block (very very little, you might approve of how insignificant the amount is)

I realize I dont have any good pics of this part (time, gloves, camera) so I am filling in the gaps with how it went down for personal record if nothing else, so please excuse as I elaborate for something I Can read later and remember how the procedure went (this is diagnostically applicable in some situations, like a journal)

Where the oil pan meets the rear cover, the rear cover seems to sit on the oil pan gasket. I Noticed there were bolts coming from underneath the rear cover, and since i didn't have the FSM document for this procedure (sigh) I guessed that I was supposed to suck the rear cover down to the oil pan gasket first by using those 2 long bolts that go through the oil pan. So I gently conveyed this message until those two bolts had pulled it down to touch, but not tight of course, just a little pressure maybe 2-5ft*lbs on the bolts or less. I go around the outside of all the other bolts now, with even less tightness just to get the cover to sit against the block fully, any silicone loses it's air gaps, but the pressure applied is so very low that air has every opportunity to escape. I then go around the same sort of order, starting with the 2 pan bolts of course, add a bit more tightness, perhaps 7-9 ft*lbs. And then I nearly loosen everything and lightly tap the rear cover, check for play or movement side to side, ensure the cover has fully seated into the pan gasket and doesn't need to slide one way or the other under tension. I spent a couple minutes looking at the surfaces, I wiped a clean line into the silicone between the cover and pan using a clean glove, and disposed of it. Once I was satisfied with alignment I began again with the two pan bolts to a small tightness. First low torque, then medium, and finally around 37 ft*lbs was my final, 3rd torque value (that seems like a familiar number). The final squeeze caused a bit more silicone to squeeze out, which I spread evenly around basically the whole back area where the gasket on the rear cover ends, and the oil pan gasket begins. The corner areas seem like they have almost a 1/2" gap (I could be way off, ) where nothing but silicone exists.

Finally the seal I was able to push in onto the crank about half-way, then I tapped it in the rest of the way with a soft blunt tool. There were spaces cut into the rear cover that looked like it was for me to use some kind of tool to push the seal in, so I did and it worked. Spent a moment looking at it with my friend then, "Is it round?" I was worried that I had sucked it down too far into the oil pan. It looked nice and round to us though.

Darth_V8r

iTrader: (4)

I am probably late recommending this,but SacCity vettes has the alignment tools for the covers really cheap. They are Absolutely essential to NOT have the front or rear main seals leak.

kingtal0n

iTrader: (1)

This is the hit from the last video I posted