Engine Oil Cavity Leak Test

Can you imagine that nowadays? My neighbor’s home has a garage floor that would shame the smartest restaurant! This brings me to the subject of this week’s post, the engine oil cavity leak test.

The purpose of the test is to verify the integrity of the final assembled engine oil cavity, checking for leaks in the upper and lower portions and to establish the leak rate of the rear oil seal. Although it sounds simple, this is a complex test which when properly configured will identify the following faults if they exist :

• Missing or damaged gaskets.
  • Head gasket
  • Rocker cover gasket.
  • Oil pan gasket
  • Front cover gasket
  • Rear oil seal
  • Intake gasket
• Missing or damaged real oil seal
• Missing or damaged spark plug tower seals.

To perform the test we will  use a three channel Vector leak tester with all channels supporting a mass flow transducer. One channel will flow air through a port on the rocker cover (upper portion), the second channel will flow air through the dipstick port (lower portion) while the third will monitor air flow from the rear oil seal.

If there is a leak in the upper portion of the assembly the upper mass flow transducer will respond to the flow , as will the lower mass flow transducer in the lower portion if there is a leak there. The mass flow connected to the rear oil seal will monitor only the leakage from the rear oil seal. This test system will allow the operator to set reject limits for the engine assembly and a different reject limit for the rear oil seal.

To save time and minimize real estate requirements for the system, all three tests are performed simultaneously.