An old friend who was a fantastic mechanic passed away the other day, far too young. Not long before he left I asked him how it was that whenever one of my bikes left his 'operating table' they no longer leaked oil. He told me what he did and I tried it the other day when putting an engine back together. Very simply having applied gasket compound to the surfaces to be bolted back together I carefully added cotton thread around the edges that come together imbedded in the gasket compound, just one thread all the way around. The result so far is that I can now park the bike without putting cardboard underneath it to catch the drips.
Maybe this is common knowledge, I don't know in my isolation in deepest Burgundy, but it works and it's simple !
A bientÃ?t
I have done it a few times…
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I can see how the thread h…
I can see how the thread helps prevent oil moving across the joint but wonder if the obstruction it creates on the faces prevents the joint faces coming together completely and in so doing is a mechanically weaker joint that would be more prone to fretting. Obviously static covers such as a timing cover would be OK but the main crankcase centre joint where there are massive forces at work would perhaps eventually move around a minute amount with various unwanted consequences.. One might argue that the thread is squashed but it doesn't matter how flat, it will always be there holding the two faces apart unlike jointing compound, which is simply squeezed out leaving just any hollows with the filling compound...Just a thought
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I have done it a few times and it works well but use 100% silk thread as it doesn't shrink with heat. It is mentioned many times on the Access Norton site.