Van Norman 22L feed chain oil leak?

Hi,

Finally got the knee on my VN back together, put the feed motor back in,
and ran it this weekend for the first time in a year or more, having scraped
the knee, column, etc.

Happily the feeds all work.

Unhappily however after adding oil to the oil pan for the feeds motor silent chain drive
inside the column, a fairly large pool of oil formed under the machine.

Now as part of repairs I had removed the entire feed splined shaft housing and oil pan, but when reassembling I used gasketmaker and hoped to have gotten a good seal to replace the original gasket which fell apart when removing

Before I start looking for a leak, I wanted to ask other VN22L owners--

If you put in modestly too much oil (hard to see the level, manual says have the slinger
only immersed in 1/4" of oil, I might have had somewhat too much in there), what happens?

Does it normally find some hole and leak out the bottom of the machine?

Pictures of the pieces when I had them apart...

Oh well. Found the leak at one point in the seal... VN had a nice sealing
surface on the base of the machine except for two areas where oddly they
had machined an approximately 1" x 1/8" deep circular depression. That's
where the gasket seal isn't complete.

The under-side of the oil pan casting and a nice stream of oil flowing down
when the feed motor is running.



It's almost like they intended for this to happen? The hole is even lined up
more or less with the slinger, so the most likely place to leak out!

Not sure exactly how I could get at it to seal it without flipping the machine over
again (without raising it to a worrying height and crawling under it).

Are there any sealants which would displace oil and bond well?

-Phil

I have a 22LU that I am in the slow process of cleaning up.
My chain is a greasy mess. I did not know the gears under
the cover were actually accessed through the bottom of the
base. Makes me want to check to see if they are full of
coolant water from a previous life. Is there a drain plug
under there?? I still have my machine on 4" wood blocks.

--Doozer

Doozer said:

I have a 22LU that I am in the slow process of cleaning up.
My chain is a greasy mess. I did not know the gears under
the cover were actually accessed through the bottom of the
base. Makes me want to check to see if they are full of
coolant water from a previous life. Is there a drain plug
under there?? I still have my machine on 4" wood blocks.

--Doozer

Click to expand...

First, as an update to this thread, I found the leak from the underside of the oil pan... indeed it was an area where the underside of the machined area was relieved (not sure why!) originally, but must have been sealed by the gasket VN originally had on the machine. So I squirted Permatex type sealer in there, left it for 24hours, and all is good.

There isn't a drain plug, but if you remove 4 SHCS from the bottom (part no 2L-236) you can remove that cap, and any oil or nastiness that made it through the bearings will drop out via gravity. On mine, I found lots of metal shavings, partly either wear from bearings and gears, or maybe the lead that was used to seal the exposed joints on the top surface of the machine base.

I have more pictures if you need them.