Ol' Leaky is now just Ol' Drippy

[68911USA]

Small back story- drove the old red car down to Birmingham from Nashville on July 4th weekend to visit the folks, and noticed I was trailing white smoke after about 50 miles on the highway. Yoinks. Pulled over and realized that I had quite a bit of oil burning off the heat exchangers, but was not losing more oil than I had with me. Topped it off a couple more times over the next hundred miles or so, and parked it at my Dad's, who is a bit of a car guy himself. Upon inspection, looked like the oil cooler or oil cooler seals were leaking. I bought a used one from Parts Heaven for $275, and I've just been waiting for the chance to get back down there at install it. Did it this weekend, and boy was it nice to work under the car using a lift instead of my oil soaked creeper on my garage floor here at home. The job was as easy as many of you told me it would be, just monkey work, really. When I got the old cooler off, I could see the cavity between the engine case and the cooler was clean as a whistle, so that told me the three little O ring seals were still fine, but I replaced them anyway. New cooler went in easily, I spent more time fiddling with the engine tin around the back of the motor than anything. Cleaned off a bunch of old goopy oil residue off of everything, and then changed the oil filter and refilled everything with SAE 30 Valvoline. Fired up, fingers crossed- no more leak! Still drips a little from two spots, but those are valve cover related, not oil cooler. Drove it back to Nashville this past weekend, and the temp stayed nice and steady, a good fix I'm proud of. The Vette is my Dad's, a '67 427/400 roadster he's put 3200 miles on since 1986!

[911scfanatic]

Hmm, so the cooler itself was cracked somewhere? Is this a common problem? I would have suspected either 1) a leak at the top of the engine making its way through the cooler, or 2) a leak between the cam housing and heads. Had you degreased and inspected previously or were you operating on a hunch. Congrats and let us know if it holds. TIA.