FE vs Roush vs Blueprint

[1795]

Originally Posted by patrickt

When it comes to FEs, one drop would not be deemed an "oil leak." In fact, even 60 years ago the Ford dealer would call that dime sized drip that drops once a week or so as "commercially reasonable." (That's what they did and then they proceeded to do nothing to fix it.) There are a couple of reasons why a solid lifter FE is almost guaranteed to drip: 1) With solid lifters, you have to be able to remove the valve covers, so you can only go so far gluing them down; 2) The configuration of the FE engine is a little unusual because it has the intake manifold come in under the valve covers before it mates up to the head. That leaves four "spots," two on each head, where everything meets up, that is prone to letting oil out. Because of the rotation of the engine, the back of the passenger side head is the most prone; 3) The gaskets, and sealing material, around the intake manifold do not really leak, but they tend to lightly "mist" a bit. If you put fluorescent dye in the oil, and view the engine under a black light, you do not see an obvious leak but rather a gradual glow around the engine itself as oil ever so lightly mists out from a variety of spots; and 4) Regardless of where your FE is leaking, or misting, from the oil will migrate back to the block plate and bell housing area behind the passenger head and starter motor area. It will then drip from there. The old joke is that if you spill a can of oil on your workbench, the oil will still find a way to make it to the FE's bellhousing/block plate and drip from there. Placing the oil diaper along the bottom of the bell housing and block plate absorbs that one drop of oil and I can then pretend that the engine doesn't leak at all. Plus, that nifty fabrication of mine makes it look almost OEM. Had Ford done that back in the 60's they would have avoided a lot of customer come-backs for oil drips.

Patrick,

I have a friend who races an Alfa and had an oil leak de to a leaky rear mani seal, the technical inspectors told him that he had to fix it before getting back out on the track. His fix was to make a diaper to catch the leak and change the diaper between sessions.