Hello Europa Family,
First of all Happy New Year together with hopes of a great year 2024! I also
hope
you had enjoyable holidays (I did have a very special one, which included a
Europa related activity, and I will an expand on a following posting).
The reason for my posting today is that Ive been having a slight exhaust leak
through
the #4 cylinder head joint to the manifold. I had this leak on my old engine
and again on my new one so I can safely assume it is related to either pipe
alignment or warped mating surface at the pipe. My other three pipes are not
leaking. So far I have realigned the pipe multiple time to try to improve the
seating of the manifold on the head with no success. I am afraid that if it
continues like this it will eventually damage the head sealing surface.
I am sure that if CKT was still around I could talk to them and solve this issue
(I should have done that earlier) but so its life. Anyone in the forum had this
issue and resolved it hopefully without requiring new parts?
What occurs to me as possible solutions:
1.- Check if the mating surface in the joint is not warped (no idea yet how) and
correct it (also no idea how).
2.- If the joint is not bad, lap the joint.
3.- Use an exhaust system sealant. Heide at CKT once recommended Hylomar EAP5
for
the slight leak at the slip joint in the #1 cylinder pipe. I would think this
could help but only short term as this joint probably moves a little.
4.- I read in the Rotax-Owner forum that CKT would sometimes recommend a sleeve
to be placed in the joint (I think this is for a seriously worn cylinder mating
surface). It would be nice if some sort of soft gasket existed for this joint.
I will check on the Rotax maintenance documentation but does anyone know what
the
specification is for the cylinder head exhaust port joint mating surface. I
would think that the exhaust one should be slightly spherical to allow some
misalignment.
A lapping tool could be created to rectify the surface on the pipe
but that could get expensive (I wish I still had my machine shop).
Anyway, I will await for our valued opinions on this subject.
Chris
Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=513018#513018
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