Attempted leak fix on 3.6 ends in disaster - need comlete teardown. ARGH !&#$@#

[CCM911]

I stopped by my buddy's garage this past Saturday. They were tearing down a 3.6 engine. It took five guys about three hours to tear it down to the crank. I know that nose-bearing intimately now.

I know this is a pain, but you are going to have such an awesome engine when you are done.

[ischmitz]

Kevin,

we actually made a lot of good progress today got the aluminum plug out with the crank still in the motor. We drilled the opening of the galley a hair wider and where able to fish it out. Next, while one guy was turning the engine over slowly by had with the suction side supplied with oil we flushed and cleaned the area real good. Alternating brake cleaner and having oil coming gushing out of there. Then we tapped the hole for a small NPT type plug (the same that Marine crank uses), repeated the flushing and then closed it up.

So it seems we really might have dogged a big bullet and won't have to tear down the motor. Worst case some debris stayed and will then force the rebuilt but at this point I am pretty confident we got all flushed out pretty good. Will keep you posted on how things develop.

Ingo

[yelcab1]

Oh Ingo man, that is a bullet to dodge. I admire the ingenuity which more than makes up for the ... ah... less than ideal pulley removal method.

I have myself learned many hard lessons. One of the hardest lessons is to always buy or make the right tools. It will always save your ass later.

[brighton911]

A perfect solution to what otherwise would have been a long, painful venture. Happy endings are always good!

[Marc Bixen]

As ischmitz has shown, save a few bucks, create huge problems. Glad you got it handled, but you DIYers need to understand, you MUST do your research. As soon as I started reading his first post, I knew where this was going. If you don't have the knowledge, discuss it with someone who does. Don't fly by the seat of your pants,this could have been BIG$$$$$. By the way, the proper Porsche tool for the job costs $20.79 RETAIL. Now it seems even sillier. Have the proper manuals, buy , rent or borrow the proper tools, IF you have the proper knowledge.

[ischmitz]

Here is the end result for the leak fix. You can see the aluminum ring epoxied onto the #8 nose bearing. The idea is that the ring will structurally support the epoxy that in turn seals and hopefully stop the leak. What's failing is the O-ring seal between case halves and bearing. We'll see if this works.



And next in this close-up with better light you can see the NPT plug that we installed into the oil galley instead of the aluminum galley plug. You can see that it's not exactly trivial to drill this out, then fish the old plug out. The galley is off-center and at an angle.



So far oil pressure is great (just like before) and for the first 20 miles the engine ran fine last night. We'll see how things go. If the engine holds up another 40k - 60k I can gather parts in the meantime and when its time to tear into it build a bullet-proof bottom end with a GT3 crank and Pauters and rather than having to do this stupid emergency tear-down.

[ischmitz]

100 mile done and the engine runs great. Oil pressure looks good. So far no weeping or signs of oil from the #8 nose bearing area. Here is a picture of the oil galley plug we fished out of the crank shaft next to a quarter. I still can't believe how lucky we were. Maybe time but buy a lottery ticket.

[Cairo94507]

Amazing repair and yeah....go buy a lottery ticket dude. Hope it keep running like should with no oil leaks.