How much to take your old oil cooler to a machine shop and have the warped surfaces trued up? Can't imagine it would cost much at all.

 

I would think that would damage the place where the actual oil cooler element attaches to the plate. At this point I have decided to get the new one from cummins and bite the bullet. If my filter head is too warped, I might try and have that surfaced. A new one of those from cummins is $110. But I'm guessing it is the oil cooler itself. It never did seal completely and I always had at least a tiny drip, from a couple of different places.

I have to borrow the bucks, but for all the time and hassle I've spent and all the jobs that I'm behind on for not having a truck, well, even $246 is starting to seem cheap now.

 

Sorry, Woodrat, I misunderstood. I thought it was the filter head that wasn't true surfaced. Yeah, and I'm sorry for all your grief! Who needs this?

Hoping things get better.....

 

It may turn out to need the filter head replaced or surfaced too, I don't know yet. I got the new Cummins cooler today and will get it installed tomorrow. Hopefully that will be the end of it.

 

Are you sure the bolt hols don't have some sort of debris in them or the bolts are not to long.. Maybe the bolt is botoming out in the bolt hole and not allowing it to be torqued down properly????

 

no, the holes were clean as a whistle. I cleaned each one out with q tips each time. And the bolts are definitely not bottoming out, and they are the original ones anyway. At this point I'm thinking that it is the pitting and what not on the oil cooler plate that is allowing oil to seep into places it shouldn't be.

 

well, I put the new oil cooler on today and ALMOST stopped the leaking...

If I rev the engine up and hold it like that, after a minute or so, you can see a drop of oil start to seep out of that same cursed bolt hole. No leaks at all at idle or half throttle, and the little leaks along the top are gone completely. At this point I am going to start using the truck again while keeping a close eye on it and plan on replacing the filter head when I do the next oil change. New one of those from Cummins is $110. Mine has about 003" of warpage in that corner, don't know how or why, but it is detectable with a straightedge, and is apparently enough to let a little oil seep past.

By the time I had removed and replaced that oil filter over and over again, the last time I put it back on, this filter too was leaking out of the seam at the top. Fortunately, I had bought fleetguard oil and fuel filters when I was at Cummins so I just popped that one on there and replaced my fuel filter too.

So by trying to use a used oil cooler, here's how much I "saved":

New oil cooler: $246

used oil cooler which was no good: $37
Two sets of gaskets wasted : $75
Two needless trips to Portland at 170 miles each : about $25 in fuel and six hours of driving time
Untold hours and grief pulling the cooler out again and again: priceless...

Amazingly, the new Cummins oil cooler is made in China... Go figure.

 

Gotta give you credit for persistence, man. I think I would've gave up and started doing the perpetual oil change thing awhile back.

Have you considered the 24-hr rtv assembly process I mentioned before? I'll bet it would be enough to stop that leak. .003 is not all that much on a surface like this. That's what gaskets are for...

 

the gasket surface is actually a "wall" in several oil galleries, so if a speck of RTV came loose, I could run the risk of plugging a piston cooling nozzle. I did consider it until i realized that.

Maybe I'll get lucky and I'll be able to retorque in a couple hunderd miles and that will be that. It's a pretty small seep now, but it bugs me...

 

Understand. But I think if you are very careful and use only a light coating it will work OK. Have you ever noticed how tuff that stuff is glommed together after it cures. The key is waiting 24 hours.