Hi all.

 

I posted a thread a few months back about a potential oil leak I was getting from the right hand side of my engine bay (passenger side). Anyway, I replaced the bottom gasket on the tandem pump attaching it onto the block and a few days later the top of my gearbox again was covered in a "watered down" oil substance. After taking the air box out again and getting a mirror underneath, it looked as though it was a coolant leak that was coming from the coolant sensor housing. 

I bought the new housing with rubber seal and set about replacing it. The old housing had cracked where the seal sits which was clearly causing the leak - however I have fitted the new housing and made sure there was no rips or tears in the old piping - have checked again today and there is again coolant leaking on top of the bell housing. I haven't over tightened the housing bolts - in fact I was probably over-cautious of tightening the 2 bolts so I just nipped them up. 

 

One thing I did notice is someone had clearly taken the old housing off and coated the mating surface with some type of red gasket sealant. I scraped all of this off the head before I fitted the new housing but I am now wondering if anyone would recommend I also put some sealant on the new housing as it doesn't seem to be sealing it even with the new seal and housing in place!

 

Any help or advice would be appreciated, or any further recommendations!

 

thanks in advance

Is the head damaged where the seal sits?

Or even worse cracked.

Could explain the sealant...

41 minutes ago, coskev said:

Is the head damaged where the seal sits?

Or even worse cracked.

Could explain the sealant...

 

Hi Kev, and no the head wasn't damaged. Once i cleaned all the old sealant off it was a lovely shiny new surface - It looks like the reason they applied the sealant was to seal the old housing as the plastic edge where the O-ring sits was cracked completely off the coolant housing. Instead of buying a new housing they obviously just covered the mating surface with sealant and bolted it back on. (For £12 I dont know why they wouldn't just fit a new housing!).

 

I read somewhere online that the bolts are only around 6nm of torque. Which isn't very tight at all hence why I didn't want to over-tighten the bolts, but as it is leaking again, it seems as though it may not be tight enough as the rubber o-ring seal that came with the new housing was making nice flat contact with the side of the engine when bolting back on. 

Just as an update to this, if anyone is interested. 

 

I got my little inspection mirror back under the bay today - took the intake pipe off the car so I could get my head down into there with a bright light and left the car running so that I could see what was going on - I had taken the car for a quick spin last night as I had removed, cleaned and replaced the front caliper and dust shield as it was dragging on the back of the disk due to being extremely rusty and snapping out of shape. 

 

When I looked under the bonnet this morning there was a load of spalshes of what seemed to be oil over the right side of the block and even up on the oil filter housing. 

 

Upon further inspection, I was watching the oil drip out from the bottom bolt holding in the Injector wiring harness where it bolts into the side of the head.

 

I've unscrewed it cleaned the mating surface and bolted it back on but it looks as though the little seal on the loom was bad - I cant seem to find any other seals that will fit on there in its place. Can anyone recommend or let me know if they have replaced the seal from the injector loom and how they did it. My next step would be to potentially put some type of sealant on it to keep it 'oil-tight'

 

Cheers all 

You've asked TPS for the part and they don't list it?

Injector loom is circa £50,or as you say clean it up properly and use some black (not orange ffs :D )gasket maker and it will seal it fine as the plastic flange sits nicely flat on head

Edited 11 March, 20179 yr by coskev

On 3/11/2017 at 12:52, coskev said:

You've asked TPS for the part and they don't list it?

Injector loom is circa £50,or as you say clean it up properly and use some black (not orange ffs )gasket maker and it will seal it fine as the plastic flange sits nicely flat on head

 

Thanks mate. Yeh they said they only sell the whole unit not just the little seal. I will get some black sealer this week and give it a try

 

thanks again