K Plane Resevoir Leak
 

Running hard for first time in my (new to me, 99) 388 yesterday. Got back and had pretty good leak in bildge from K plane resevoir. Heres the skinny: someone had filled both resevoirs to the correct levels with ATF. The motor sticker says 10-30 or 10-40, is ATF alright, it is usually alot harder on seals. I dont have any manual for the k planes. Next thing , noticed K plane res. have yellow caps with no bleed hole as the drive trim caps do. Shouldn't these be vented as well? I'm thinking the res. may have been overpressurized and leaked out more from where ever than if it had the bleed hole. Any insight? Thanx

I always had oil around the resevoirs. I tried the no leak caps that are for sale in the oso merchandise section and have not had any problem with leaks since I put them on. :D

I wish I could answer the question about the tranny fluid but Im sure someone else will know. I just use the merc oil that they recommend but your right the stickers do say 10w 30.

Thanx Scott, so you are venting both systems drives & planes with the new caps. I can;t see why my K pump reservoirs are not vented. the caps are yellow and look to be the same as the merc caps on the drive trim pumps less the holes. They are also not the new type which has the vents in the threads of the cap. Well hpefully some one will know....as well as the ATF question.

I have run ATF in tabs and trim pumps before. Ive never had any troubles with it. I like ATF cause it absorbs water whereas M/O will not.

M

You can run just about any fluid you want in there. The motor oil is what they say to use then I would use it, however some of the older pumps run on ATF and others Motor oil, but the sticker is telling ya what they want in there. :D:D

I believe I have successfully run ATF in these systems years ago also. So it will and does seem to work OK with the K Planes but I'm still getting alot of blow by from the reservoirs. Back to my ? on the vented cap....Do you guys who run K planes have vented caps same as the drive trim pumps? Thanx all for the input

My tab pump reservoir caps have vents down the inside of the threads. Kind of like a groove for the air.

All of my pumps (drives, tabs) are not level. I set levels with the drives full "down" and the tabs full "up". I fill to a spot that would be at the "fill to" mark if the pumps were level (this take a bit of imagination).

I had a drive pump that had a leaking reservoir. Required replacement of the reservoir (was cheap). Make sure that is not happening to you.

M

The picture that I showed you is showing half of the bilge the pump on the right is for the K planes the left pump is drive trim. Same deal on the other side of my bilge. So the answer to your question is yes you can run vented caps on both and yes my old yellow caps were both vented or should I say they both had a hole in the top:rolleyes:

Blue caps are great. They elimate one source od weeping. Check the braided lines running out of the resevoirs. They have a clear plastic coating on them. If they are yellow / reddish, that signifies that fluid is weeping out of the lines and / or from the fittings that attach to the resevoir. These resevouirs and their connections are not a pefert scenario. Someone needs to re-engineer them. Good Luck