While trying to find where my coolant leaks are I have removed the shroud, fan and left wheel well splash guard. I have found several areas leaking oil

1) The valve cover seems to be leaking quite a bit on the outside. I would try to tighten up the bolts but it looks like you have to take the intake off to get to some of them. The front of the engine is covered in a thin layer of old oil down to about where the water pump is. I had to replace the intake once before, it wasn't a terrible job. Is it worth replacing?

2) the crank case ventilation tube (I guess that is what it is) that goes form the valve cover to the air cleaner outlet pipe (the big rubber pipe that goes from the MAF to the intake) has quite a bit of oil around it. It just slips on to the valve cover. Is having the oily mess all around this a bad sign? I thought about putting a small hose clamp on it to tighten it so the oil doesn't come out as bad.

3) It is very difficult to see, but there are some hoses with oil on them on the back of the engine (one of the coolant hoses that run horizontally behind the engine just below the EGR) It looks to be in the area of the EGR valve. Any idea what this could be?

4) It isn't engine oil, but the steering rack is leaking on the drivers side. The bottom half of the boot on inner tie rod is wet with oil and the area just inboard of the boot. I assume the only solution to this problem is to replace the entire rack?


Thanks!

 

Here are some pictures.

You can see in the first one all of the oil running down from the valve cover. Is it possible to just try to re-torque the bolts to see if that would help? I am not getting oil in the spark plug area and I really don't want to take off the intake again (had to replace it because of the manifold runner/swirl issues).

The second picture shows the passenger side of the valve cover and the mess around the crank case ventilation tube. I am hoping just a small radiator clamp might fix this issue.

The third picture shows the leak on the steering rack. It is just starting to leak on the passenger side and this driver side is pretty bad. Where the hoses from the pump connect it is dry, so I assume a new rack is the only solution.

The 4th and 5th pictures show the oil leaking on the back of the motor. You can see the EGR right above the rubber hose and it has some oil on it. The fifth picture is look more up from the bottom at the hose and the EGR.

 

lemmy:

1) The valve cover seems to be leaking quite a bit on the outside. I would try to tighten up the bolts but it looks like you have to take the intake off to get to some of them. The front of the engine is covered in a thin layer of old oil down to about where the water pump is. I had to replace the intake once before, it wasn't a terrible job. Is it worth replacing?
A: I replaced my valve cover gasket(s) when I replaced my intake manifold. I like a clean engine so replacing the VC gasket(s) was a must. But you could certainly torque them down and see if it helps. It won't hurt anything so long as you don't gorilla torque them down.


2) the crank case ventilation tube (I guess that is what it is) that goes form the valve cover to the air cleaner outlet pipe (the big rubber pipe that goes from the MAF to the intake) has quite a bit of oil around it. It just slips on to the valve cover. Is having the oily mess all around this a bad sign? I thought about putting a small hose clamp on it to tighten it so the oil doesn't come out as bad.
A: The oil you see is normal. That's just the system doing what it's supposed to do. However, since it's on the outside of that vent pipe I would try the clamp you suggested.


3) It is very difficult to see, but there are some hoses with oil on them on the back of the engine (one of the coolant hoses that run horizontally behind the engine just below the EGR) It looks to be in the area of the EGR valve. Any idea what this could be?
A: It's kind of hard to see what's going on there but any oil back in that area would come from the valve cover. Tightening the vc bolts may or may not help.

4) It isn't engine oil, but the steering rack is leaking on the drivers side. The bottom half of the boot on inner tie rod is wet with oil and the area just inboard of the boot. I assume the only solution to this problem is to replace the entire rack?
A: Can't help here. Maybe someone else can.

 

Thanks for your suggestions.

I ended up replacing the rack along with the two hoses that go to the rack. I am hoping everything stays nice and clean on the bottom now. I checked all around the oil pan and it is pretty clean down there.

So it looks like if I can fix the valve cover (either by re-torquing them or replacing the gasket) I might fix the rest of my oil leaks.