Vince pavlicek

Happy New Year, I have owned my ’90 964 C2 coupe for two year and it has been leak free. This summer it started slightly leaking in the area of the oil tank but I expect that to be one of the many pipe connections so I put off working on it till I put the car up for the winter. Salt on the road = no driving.
Now I am into the winter maintenance work and I find an unexpected task, oil leaking from the oil line that goes from the filter, across the back of the engine and under the heat exchanger to the block. The leak is at the block connection. Anyone been here?
Questions:
1) The driver side heat exchanger keeps me from putting wrenches on this connection. I assume I get to pull the heat exchanger/exhaust header as one piece. Any tricks I should know? The exhaust port nuts are rusted and I am applying penetrating oil. I see the crossover from the right side comes into it also and those nuts look the worst but they are bolts and will be easily replaced. Just looking for experiences and things to watch out for.

2) is there an o-ring in the oil pipe connection?

Thanks in advance, Vince

Indycam

How much does it leak ?

Its a case not a block .

"The driver side heat exchanger keeps me from putting wrenches on this connection."
This is an international forum with people who drive on the other side so ....

Bearclaw

...so, he lives in St. Charles, Illinois, USA.

Colin 90 C2

The oil line connection to the case is a common leak point. You just need to tighten the connection, but you will need to drop the dirver's side exchanger. Pretty simple task as long as you can get all the bolts loose. The crossover pipe and the cat need to be disconnected. If the oil is leaking all along the hose, you may need to replace the hose or it may be the crimp connection under the heat wrap. You can take it to a hydraulic shop and they can probably make a hose cheaper than you can buy. Or they may be able to recrimp.

Vince pavlicek

Yes it is the right side case. I have the cat off for the valves so as long as I can loosen the nuts, no problem. I have all winter to wait for the penetrating oil.... The oil appears to originate from the case connection and blow back. "The hose" is a hardpipe but, now that you mention it, there is also a bit of oil back by the heat wrap. I'll pull the whole pipe and take a look.

Thanks for the replies,
vince

IanUK

Now you have some of the clutter off, if you are in no hurry why not clean everything off and wait and see where the leak develops. Without the air swirling around from driving you won't get the oil blown everywhere. Would also be worth checking the bottom of your barrels too whilst you're in there as sometimes this leaks down onto the oil pipe and can look like the oil pipe at first diagnosis.

Ian.

greenjt

Hey Ian, what is the fix if it does end up being the bottom of the barrels? I have the same constant drip on the fitting in question. Leaves me a drip after each drive. Been meaning to get to it and have finally resolved to do it this month.

jg

Vince pavlicek

Ian, when I pulled the exhaust pieces, I removed the battery and drained all the fluids also so she is not startable. However, there is NO oil up on the cylinders and overall the bottom is really clean so I am confident in my diagnosis. The clean bottom makes me want to stop leaks as soon as I can. I carefully checked the cylinders for the 964 disease and I have/had a tiny oil leak on the #1 head but the oil is clearly not fresh so it worries me not yet. With the oil tank leak and this connection, I'm looking everywhere for oil. Thank god this car is SOOO much fun to drive that I don't mind working on it. My wife does not get it but that appears to be common.
vince

JasonAndreas

Two months ago EBSRacing posted that they had overstock of this line available for $125USD. I would check with them to see if that is still the case. Unlike some other of the oil lines there are no fitments issues with this one.

If they are really rusty consider using MAPP & Oxygen gas or maybe even oxyacetylene to heat the fasteners. If you strip the inside of the one of the barrel nuts or roundoff the nut on the #3 cylinder you are basically screwed. There is no room for any of the trick fastener removal tools so you aren't left with too many choices. When you replace the fasteners don't forget to also replace the (1 for each cylinder exhaust port) metal crush gaskets.

IanUK

You live with it until you need to do a top end overhaul and can pull the barrels off as that's the only way to put new oil rings on the bottom of the barrels. Or if it starts to drip too much do an 'early' top end overhall.

Regarding the oil pipe fitting isn't there two possible sources for a weep here? 1/ Where the pipe screws on to the fitting and 2/ where the fitting screws into the crankcase ... been a while so memory might not be 100% on this.

stevepaa

I have a similar issue witht the short pipe connection on the rhs. I did a rebuild and now this has started to leak several months later. I have ordered a new pipe from Porsche. I also ordered new gaskets between exhaust and heads and between exhaust halves.


Can anyone vouch for the quality of the hose from EBS? I know some have posted their problems with aftermarket hoses from filter to tank.

JasonAndreas

I bought the crankcase to oil filter console line (964-207-252-14) that was listed as "genuine" from EBSRacing on 09/27/2005. There were no fitments issues at all but I just (5 seconds ago) checked their website and that oil line is now listed as manufactured by "COHLINE" and the price has gone up $80USD from what I paid.

Vince pavlicek

So now I have tried to start pulling the exhaust manifold and the nuts are a challenge. Not to loosen, but to reach. My socket does not fit in the two holes in the heat exchanger and the other four nuts are a !@#$%^ to reach. What wrenches do people use for the open nuts? And I guess I need to buy a thin wall 13mm socket.

Vince pavlicek

Sorry, had a trouble light failure, now I can see that the nuts in the heat exchanger are 8mm hex bolts, I got those started. Now just looking for clues on the nuts. I'll accept "just fight them off with whatever wrench you can get in there" but I hate doing that on torqued nuts to avoid rounding or snaping them off...

Colin 90 C2

Swivel sockets are the answer.
Genuine swivels are the best, but you can also use universal joint swivels.
Available from Sears, or local hardware store.