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Soooo...my car went from what was a very mild rear main seal leak to what appeared to be a rather large rear main seal leak.
Problem was when the tranny came out it was pretty obvious that more than the rear main seal was leaking and the motor needed to come out to diagnose where on top of the motor my leak was coming from. Searched around the usual suspects up there being the oil cooler, oil tank, but after playing CSI with spray patterns we concluded that an oil feed hose on the back side of the motor was actually leaking. Made quite a mess out of the top drivers side of the motor and was acutally spraying up onto the firewall and basically all over the place.
Picture of the offending line below. You'll see the rubber insert to give the line flex which is where the problem was happening. The weird part was we used smoke to try to insure that was the leak and couldn't generate a 100% positive feeling. Only thing to do was replace and put it back together as we ruled out pretty much everything else.
Much to my surprise...when the replacement line showed up (at the cost of $500...they're proud of this line) the design has been changed to a metal mesh reinforced flex section instead of the rubber. I'm guessing that Porsche realized at some point this was an issue and changed the design.
So she's all back together now...put about 40 gentle miles on her yesterday and everything seems dry at this point. Track day this weekend will be the true test.
$500 for an oil line. WTF! Whereas other manufacturers would offer recall or subsidy on replacement for a flawed component, Porsche reams you when they learn a part could fail and we'll need a replacement. Gotta hand it to Porsche!
I had to have that line replaced two years ago. Same symptoms, big mess on top of the engine that was hard to identify. Dropped the trans first, then dropped the engine when they couldn't figure out what was leaking. While they had it apart, they found a crack in the heat exchanger "bracket" (the cast manifold under the oil cooler) and wound up replacing that too.
Soooo...my car went from what was a very mild rear main seal leak to what appeared to be a rather large rear main seal leak.
Problem was when the tranny came out it was pretty obvious that more than the rear main seal was leaking and the motor needed to come out to diagnose where on top of the motor my leak was coming from. Searched around the usual suspects up there being the oil cooler, oil tank, but after playing CSI with spray patterns we concluded that an oil feed hose on the back side of the motor was actually leaking. Made quite a mess out of the top drivers side of the motor and was acutally spraying up onto the firewall and basically all over the place.
Picture of the offending line below. You'll see the rubber insert to give the line flex which is where the problem was happening. The weird part was we used smoke to try to insure that was the leak and couldn't generate a 100% positive feeling. Only thing to do was replace and put it back together as we ruled out pretty much everything else.
Much to my surprise...when the replacement line showed up (at the cost of $500...they're proud of this line) the design has been changed to a metal mesh reinforced flex section instead of the rubber. I'm guessing that Porsche realized at some point this was an issue and changed the design.
So she's all back together now...put about 40 gentle miles on her yesterday and everything seems dry at this point. Track day this weekend will be the true test.
So anyhow...now you know.
I think that I'd take that rig to my local hydraulic hose shop and fix it for a lot less than $500
Live and learn...not alot of time to waste with this one, as it was I got it back the night before my track day and still had to do my full inspection and swap rear rotors.
I would have been much more than $500 upset if I missed my track day :-)
Did you have the gt3? Would love to see some video of the two of you dueling.
I did. Was great to get it back out. This is its third event on the new motor which I think is stronger than my old motor. That was my second time at Mid-O and I really enjoyed the track this time.
05-19-2016, 09:10 AM
Here's a new one to watch out for: Oil Leak
miles on her yesterday and everything seems dry at this point. Track day this weekend will be the true test.
