China wall leak

[84prspctr]

I finally stumbled across the cause for the front of my engine/intake being misted with oil. I happened to have it running with the hood open and the sun was shining perfectly to where I could see small puffs of blow by or gasses coming through the China wall up front. The engine isn’t loosing much oil at all, and I don’t have the time to pull the intake and re seal all of that at the moment. Will it hurt anything further to run it like that for a couple weeks until I can fix it?

 

[nvrenuf]

China wall??

 

[84prspctr]

The wall on the front of the engine where the intake mates to the block where your supposed to run a bead of rtv

 

[PrairieDrifter]

You could maybe clean it up good and put some rtv on the face, would be better than leaving it. But either way you should be okay. Just fix it asap

 

[squaredeal91]

Agreed. Clean dry the oil and re rtv

 

[84prspctr]

I have been driving it like this for a few months, just so happened I found out that was the cause. I’ll clean it up and smear some rtv on the face like you guys said. Thanks

 

[RecklessWOT]

A small intake leak isn't the end of the world, it will hurt performance slightly but whatever. I drove my truck with a coolant-weeping intake leak for about 5 years. But man, when it failed, it FAILED. I can't start the thing now because all of a sudden there is such a massive air leak that as soon as you start the thing it just sucks up to an extremely lean WOT. You ever hear a 350 that was peacefully running at idle all of a sudden jump up to about 6500rpm with no end in sight? I can't remember running so fast in the last 10 years and I'm surprised I didn't rip the door off the hinges or snap the key off in the ignition trying to shut it down... Thank God for EFI or the key would not have killed it...

I'll get around to fixing it and it should be fine, but don't wait until that point. If the intake seal is shot, you will need to fix it sooner or later. It's easy to just put it off forever until you can't, and eventually when it gets to that point you can't ignore it.

 

[84prspctr]

It isn’t dripping any oil, just puffing a little bit of blow by out and misting the engine with fine oil. I can’t tell a difference in performance, it still runs a little rich too. Sits at its 600 rpm idle with no stumbling or anything

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[Rickf]

We call that rustproofing in the north east.

 

[SquareRoot]

It's just crankcase pressure escaping. I can't see how that can affect engine performance. It's just going to mist the engine compartment with oil mist and attract dirt. When I bought my truck, it had a new crate engine and a massive leak on the rear China wall. Again, no affect on performance, but it leaked enough oil that it saturated my starter and basically killed the solenoid contacts.