With my engine removed, I am gettting ready to clean up the engine, and replace the front (and probably the rear) crank seals. Before I pulled it I was having problems with an oil leak from the front of my engine that seemed to be being blown up and over the heads by the cooling fan. After I pulled the fan housing, I have found quite a bit of caked on oil and dirt, but am still uncertain that I have found my problem. When I looked into the tins over the heads, I saw that the inside of the tins were covered in oil, but the tops of the heads looked dry. Is this because of the oil being burnt, or is it because my oil leak is somewhere below the top of the heads?

I will be removig the tins and the rest of the top of the engine tomorrow, so I expect I will get a better view then. I wasn't going to pull the tins, but after looking in I saw that my heads are also covered in leaves, as well as the top of my oil cooler.....Hmmmm, I wonder why my cooler wasasn't cooling so well?


Second topic: I noticed that the thermost operated flaps that are to deflect the air while the engine warms up are not hooked up to anything. I live in FL, so I am wondering if I really need this setup or can I just leave it off when I reassemble?

And finally, I am missing one blade on the cooling fan. Need to replace, or will it be fine? I didn't notice anything with a vibration problem before I pulled the engine.

Jim

i would recommend operating cooling flaps (sounds like you need a thermostat) and fan with all blades. if you don't do these, i seriously doubt that with a stock engine you will have major trouble. thermostat is to warm up engine properly. factory did it for a reason and i myself don't second guess the factory engineers.

I would definitley recommend removing all of the debris from under the tin.

As for the cooling flaps, they are designed to default to the full down position over the oil cooler.

The only issue is that it takes the engine longer to reach operating temperature.

IMHO, I would go ahead and fix it.

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I will probably replace it and get it to actually work. I was just wondering if living in a warmer (than Germany) climate I might not need to bother.

Jim

i bet you a nice cold one ( ) that you just found your oil leak ...

when the uneducated remove the cooling flaps mechanism, they tend to remove the plastic wheel that routes the wire from the thermostat to the flaps.
too bad that the bolt that holds the wheel is a through bolt that goes straight into the case!

so, you might want to check and see if you got that hole plugged ...
Andy

My pulley is still in place, the only thing I am missing is the bellows. I will check to see if I am leaking from that bolt while I am in there. Thanks for the heads up.

If it is not the leak I will take a black and tan, preferably hand delivered early in the morning so that you can spend the rest of the day giving me a hand cleaning her up.

Jim

Never, ever, EVER remove the flaps! They help get air where it needs to go--most particularly, they duct air through the oil cooler. Leave them out, and your oil will get hot, hot, hot!

--DD

I looked at how the flaps were before I removed them in my disassembly process, and it looked to me as though the passenger side flap covered the oil cooler, and even in the up position would just be blocking even more of the air flow from going over both the heads and the cooler. I understand that this would help in cooler temps to get things warmed up quicker, but it didn't look like it did any directing of air flow after it was warmed up. I am a noob, so is there something I am missing, or maybe one of my PO's had something set wrong? I don't want things original for originality sake. I just want things to work right...that being said, I do understand that German engineers don't do anything just for funzies.

that's how it's supposed to be! don't mess with it!

if you disconnect the thermostat wire, the flaps will lock into "fail safe" position ...
if you look closely again, you'll see that the flap over the oil cooler actually has a rounded end that allows air to be diverted straight into the oilcoller WHEN THE FLAP IS DOWN !!!
if the flap is anything but flat down or if it is removed, the oil-cooler will get NO air ...

Andy

If you remove the flaps you have to keep the flap over the oil cooler and fasten it
down on the oil cooler tin. That flap is position in such a way that directs the air to the oil cooler. Without it the oil cooler would get very little or none at all