20 replies to this topic

[Walkers1985]

Cheers been looking for a picture like that to compare it. Yeah they were metal but the metal ones aren't available anymore they've been replaced with a black plastic/nylon one instead.

[Dusky]

Its not a very late carb engine by any chance? They had a terrible 'olive' fitting on the oil feed pipe

[AlexMozza]

Its not a very late carb engine by any chance? They had a terrible 'olive' fitting on the oil feed pipe

A lot of them had the rover fix fitted.
Although they still tend to leak!!

[cal844]

Its not a very late carb engine by any chance? They had a terrible 'olive' fitting on the oil feed pipe

A lot of them had the rover fix fitted.
Although they still tend to leak!!

Mine don't ;)

[tiger99]

I think most of you guys are missing one of the important clues. It only seems to happen intermittently. Therefore Moke Spyder's suggestion about gummed rings is the only really credible suggestion so far. I suggest that in addition to applying his suggestion to loosen them off, we should be focussing on other things that could cause occasional but not continual crankcase pressurisation. Could something in the breather system be blocked intermittently? As there were so many different breather systems, and many more configurations created by well-meaning owners fitting the wrong parts, perhaps during an engine change, it is hard to know where to begin, but a check for hoses that may become flattened would be a useful starting point.

 

Another thing that is known to happen is that petrol gets past the piston rings on any car, not just Minis, and occasionally the vapour ignites in the sump. There have been tales of dipsticks being blown right out. But when this happens, what is the source of ignition? Flame will not pass through the normal piston to cylinder gap, but it can pass back through inlet valves into the manifold as we know from backfires. To prevent it entering the crankcase via the breather system there probably should be a flame trap somewhere. Missing gauze filter/flame trap? The root cause is sometimes carburettor flooding or excessively rich mixture.

 

I would suggest thinking about the general state of the engine and how well it seems to be running, as possible indications of something amiss. I suspect that the root cause is something quite small and easy to fix, once found. The breather system is bound to benefit from a strip and clean anyway, they always do after a while.

[Walkers1985]

Got the dipstick hole pipe through today fitted it and did a 40 mile round trip to Exeter on the dual carriageway and didn't lose a drop of oil. Never thought a small piece of black plastic could make me so happy.

On the downside it did mean I've been running the car with the oil below minimum for around a year now. But all seems OK so no harm no foul I guess.

Thank you to everyone for all their help and suggestions I really appreciate it.

Edited by Walkers1985, 11 December 2016 - 05:26 PM.