1924 Panhard et Levassor water in oil

[Guest 246gts]

My engine on the 1924 Panhard is leaking water into the oil.

Having chased a leak around the cylinder heads and done as much as I can think of to solve the problem there I sat down a little and had a rethink as to where oil and water come together in the engine.

I can't contemplate a cracked block!

So where else do these two components meet?

The water pump is driven by a cross shaft which drives the magneto on one side of the engine and the pump on the other.

I have had the pump apart before and all looked well so I repacked it with grease and refitted. BUT the water is still getting into the oil so I have now taken the water pump out again and piped it up so that the back of the pump is not attached to the engine and is visible.

I filled up the radiator / engine with water and observed a big leak from the back of the pump where the drive is. Can I have found my problem???

On the section of the pump in my "handbook" it shows that the seal of the shaft into the body of the pump is made from "Spyro" but I cannot see any modern reference to that material on the net.

Anybody know what the modern name for that type of seal might be??

Thanks

Dave<object type="cosymantecnisbfw" cotype="cs" id="SILOBFWOBJECTID" style="width: 0px; height: 0px; display: block;"></object>

[Ivan Saxton]

Most likely cause is pinhole leakage through corrosion in the junkhead. Water will enter the cylinder, and drain into the sump. A customer had two engines, one with cast iron junkheads, and the other with aluminium. Some of the aluminium ones were corroded to the point that they would not hold water. The car was the larger six cylinder Willys Knight of the 1920s, which was about 4 1/2 litres six cylinder, well built with a seven main bearing crankshaft. I honed the inner sleeves to parallel at the same oversize (about ten thousandths of an inch larger than standard, with a good cross-hatch finish. The pistons were expanded slightly for correct skirt clearance, and new rings individually fitted for end gap. I made a mandrel with centres both ends to run true in the grinder. Clamp plates were to lock the junk rings individually, concentric and with the correct end gap as they had when new. I pre-ground them to a clean surface, de-greased thoroughly to remove oil in the cast iron, grit blasted with sharp aluminium oxide grit, rebuilt them with molybdenum wire-feed metal coating. This is self-bonding. I used copper shim to prevent overspray onto the clamp-plates, and similarly ton keep the moly out of the diagonal end-gap of the ring. The junk rings were then ground to the finished inside diameter of the honed inner sleeve. Coatings like this are sealed while still hot with an air-hardening phenolic sealer; but there is still slight porosity on the surface that holds a little oil.

This rebuilding stopped compression loss. Moly is an excellent compatible working surface against cast iron. The engine of both this and a smaller model belonging to the same owner no longer smoked nor had excessive oil consumption. And they then started easily. Oil smoke in the exhaust of a sleeve valve is due to compression loss past the junk heads blowing oil from the sleeves into the exhaust. This is how you can fix that problem at the same time if you need to.

[Guest 246gts]

Most likely cause is pinhole leakage through corrosion in the junkhead. Water will enter the cylinder, and drain into the sump. A customer had two engines, one with cast iron junkheads, and the other with aluminium. Some of the aluminium ones were corroded to the point that they would not hold water. The car was the larger six cylinder Willys Knight of the 1920s, which was about 4 1/2 litres six cylinder, well built with a seven main bearing crankshaft. I honed the inner sleeves to parallel at the same oversize (about ten thousandths of an inch larger than standard, with a good cross-hatch finish. The pistons were expanded slightly for correct skirt clearance, and new rings individually fitted for end gap. I made a mandrel with centres both ends to run true in the grinder. Clamp plates were to lock the junk rings individually, concentric and with the correct end gap as they had when new. I pre-ground them to a clean surface, de-greased thoroughly to remove oil in the cast iron, grit blasted with sharp aluminium oxide grit, rebuilt them with molybdenum wire-feed metal coating. This is self-bonding. I used copper shim to prevent overspray onto the clamp-plates, and similarly ton keep the moly out of the diagonal end-gap of the ring. The junk rings were then ground to the finished inside diameter of the honed inner sleeve. Coatings like this are sealed while still hot with an air-hardening phenolic sealer; but there is still slight porosity on the surface that holds a little oil.

This rebuilding stopped compression loss. Moly is an excellent compatible working surface against cast iron. The engine of both this and a smaller model belonging to the same owner no longer smoked nor had excessive oil consumption. And they then started easily. Oil smoke in the exhaust of a sleeve valve is due to compression loss past the junk heads blowing oil from the sleeves into the exhaust. This is how you can fix that problem at the same time if you need to.

Ivan, Thanks for your interesting reply, I did have problems with the porous junk heads and these have been repaired. There were signs of previous repairs to these heads so it seems this was a common problem.

On checking the water pump there is leakage from the back of the shaft and this does need attention also

Thanks

Dave

<object type="cosymantecnisbfw" cotype="cs" id="SILOBFWOBJECTID" style="width: 0px; height: 0px; display: block;"></object>