951 Timing Belt and Oil Leak Repair

After the club race at the Kansas Speedway, I had to take care of a bad oil leak on this 951. The cam tower started leaking last year due to some loose bolts, which I had tightened and gave us a temporary fix. Well, it finally let go completely and was really smoking bad, so it was time to go in and replace the entire gasket. Since the car was due for a timing belt anyway, it only made for a little additional labor.

When I got into the motor, I noticed something was very wrong. When this motor was built (not by us), the timing belt tensioner and the balance shaft tensioner rollers were mixed up! They have lips on them to keep the belts centered in relation to lips on other gears, so in theory the belts could have walked sideway and eventually torn themselves up on the motor. Not good. I guess it does show you that maybe some things are over engineered as this car has been running like this for 5-6 years now without issue.

And the cam tower off for rebuilding/resealing.

And going back together with the rollers in the correct position

One other quick modification was to get rid of the vacuum port at the bottom of the throttle body that likes to leak bypass oil. Tap, some loctite, and a bolt and we were back in business.