Hey all,

After the last oil change I discovered some drips of oil in my driveway. A few days later I noticed white smoke from under the hood when I came home. Luckily the turbos are well. The oil seems to come from the top of the engine, runs down at the side and after some time, hits the exhaust causing James Bond style fog behind me.

Checked the oil level, all fine (at least no major leak...)

Any ideas where the oil might make its way out into the wild of my engine bay?

It’s a 3.6 tdv8, just happened after the oil change, only on the passenger (Germany - so where the dipstick is) side.

Thanks!

Last edited by Platrengold on 1st Dec 2020 9:06pm. Edited 1 time in total

I had a similar problem; it turned out to be the the Intake Manifold gasket ! See if you can see any oil around the intake manifold.

Laurie

Hey Laurie,

thanks, you are right. Lifted the heat shield just enough to get a glance and it looks like oil is coming from on top of the intake manifold / valve cover. So my bet, after taking a look at a picture of the gasket, it is one of the rings around an injector causing the leak...

I don’t know if this is good or bad. The oil loss is marginal, so I will first tighten the nuts and bolts to spec and see if that fixes the problem. Otherwise I will have to spend a day in pain stripping everything that lives on top of the engine, lowering it to get the injectors out and replace the 25 euro gasket...to finally: put it all back together...

That's great you found it easily enough. When my manifold came off, I made the decision to replace the manifold due (10 yrs 174km ) to it's age and the possibility of cracking. I did have a restrictive /fault logged, I couldn't find a crack, but since changing it I have had no problems. It was worth the piece of mind and to replace it was easy at the time. As you know it's a of a job if you have to replace it later !
Looking forward it was the RH manifold, apparently most are this side.

Laurie

Definitely a consideration to change the entire piece to go through the pain only once...

I torqued the bolts to spec (25NM - didn't have a torque wrench that goes that low, so I estimated "finger-tight" + 90 degrees to do the job - that's at least how I torque down spark plugs in my old Merc.

Long story short: It seems like the problem has been solved. No more smoke, no oil in the driveway. Drove 400km Autobahn since...

Long-term fix to be validated. I will keep you updated.

That's a great result, I now wonder how many others have replaced the gasket, when a re-torque might have fixed the problem in the first instance. Luckily or not for me the manifold must of had a hairline crack somewhere to throw that fault !

Laurie

Some news, not yet sure if bad or great news. Parked her today after a 50km back country road trip. Came back and hey, a rainbow...

Could be some left over oil as the repair was a quick and dirty „got the heatshield off for diagnostics, why not tighten the bolts“ job with no engine cleaning.

Did the crack produce any fault codes?
I wonder if there is some boost pressure leaking into the cam area, pushing the oil trough the seal. But I would expect a fault code in case of a pressure leak.

So, further observation required. Luckily I am so patient..
Maybe I will find some time and place to clean up the oil next week.

Click image to enlarge

Long-term result: It’s definitely getting worse and needs replacement. Had -5 outside and oil was pouring out. So definitely cracked I would say.

Could have been dead before or I might have killed it overtightening the bolts... ------
2009 Galway Green 3.6 TDV8 Vogue SE
1981 China Blue Mercedes 280E W123