30C Fuel Leak

Had a couple of minutes to remove the rocker cover to fix the oil leak all the time wondering why it started to leak after all these years. Found my answer but it must have been like that when it was assembled all that time ago and I never noticed. Found on the front end of the cover the corners were turned up slightly so I put them in the vice and pulled a bit of weight on them to get them level again and a far better chance of a proper seal this time. Have a lot to clean up properly before assembly but I am not in a hurry and doing this in between other jobs that have to be done first.
My metal rule shows the way the corners drop away but are nice and level now.

It is amazing just how much rocker covers get warped

The amount of people (pretty much all of us, myself included) have at least once or maybe a hell of a lot more than that, often noticed it leaking and our very first thought is, "I'll just nip that up a bit and see if it helps" and all we really do is stuff the rocker cover or tappet cover more

When I bought my Mack all those years ago it looked like a oily old Detroit, couldn't even see the what colour it was on most of the motor

It desperately needed a head job, the young fella that came and helped my mate and I put it back together one night patiently scraped and wired brushed everything until it was spotless
We the spent considerable time making everything square and straight
Lots of gasket goo and it was like a different motor
Just the other day I was working on a transformer and some joker had done the cover up so tight on the HV (highvoltage) protection relay that during a storm the water ran in and caused the HV breaker to trip
They go bang in a big way

Good work Cobba you should hold your head high with the work you do


Paul

To make things harder these rocker covers are held on by only two large thumb screws in a similar way as the old grey Holden motors so don't give you much hope to start with. When I did this last time I prepped it all and wiped it with thinners applied my Permatex #2 non hardening goo on and lightly tightened the thumb screws and walked away for a few days. Well here I am again. I will also check the other end but they looked ok but looks can be deceiving.

I finished cleaning all surfaces off and used paint thinners to ensure no oil or contaminants were left. I put sealant on the gasket then laid it on the head, sealant on the cover and dropped it in placed and used the 2 thumb screws to hold the cover in place, firmly but not too tight. Then I wiped the excess sealant off and fitted the coil and horn back in place. You can see a date stamp on the head 3/11/98. That is when the previous owner had work done on the head before we bought the tractor. I still ended up doing a full engine rebuild. When I get back to this in a couple of days I will then put the body parts back on.

Final Episode.
Today I filled the fuel tank and found no more leaks, just as well. So I then fitted the scuttle plate then started the motor up and ran it for around 15 minutes at various revs. All good with oil pressure, volts and amps and most of all no oil leaks. It is almost impossible to get this up to running temps even with the radiator blind up all the way mainly because it is a fairly new radiator and the cooling system holds a lot and there are no thermostats in these old girls. So although the engine is giving off heat as is the radiator the temp gauge will not rise until we go for a drive then by the bottom of the street we are at temps. So next the bonnet goes on followed by the side covers. Just fitting the last bonnet catch and yep it breaks. So off we go to the bench to discover what went wrong, why it went wrong and to fix it. All came down to lack of lube and the tine "e" clip pulled off the end of the shaft. I was able to re-use the clip and put it together again. All he needs now is a bath and a run down the road.