Oil leak - Pure800, PVC, or something else

[LE617Supra]

I’ve been chasing down an oil leak on my A90 with a Pure800. I’m getting ready to pull the turbo but before I do I figured I’d run it by the group.

The car appears to have oil leaking past the seal on the charge pipe but the turbo itself is clean, no smoke, runs strong. The car has a fair amount of crankcase pressure and I’m running a vent but still have a decent amount of oil blown past the vent. Definitely more than I’d like. No catch can on PCV or CCV as I’ve seen mostly negative results from others.

I assume it’s a bad seal on the turbo but any additional thoughts before I pull the turbo?

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[KBGT]

It could be the oil feed fitting from the block, it is right in that area.

 

[Amfchang]

It’s common with more flow or boost by using pure, there’s a significant increase of blow by. I used to panic. You all good brother.

 

[Amfchang]

If it was bad seals. Major smoke out exhaust and continuous. Catless and our cars have intermittent light clear smoke. I have the CCV/PCV Verus AOS and the Breather. Still the same.

 

[LE617Supra]

Thanks for the replies. It seems like a lot of oil blow by to be considered normal but maybe it is. Added a picture of the bottom pan for reference. This is after about 30 miles and a few pulls, nothing crazy.

 

[FuzzyRev]

After only 30 miles? That's a straight-up oil LEAK.

 

[Mason]

Yeah you’re fs leaking oil from somewhere. Is the bottom of turbo wet?

And for the other pure guys in here, how can you tell if you’re getting blow by because your piston rings are trashed?

 

[LE617Supra]

Thanks for all the replies. Been building cars for 30 years now and I’ve chased down a lot of random issues. I can’t for the life of me figure out where this is coming from. The oil gets blown all over that side so it’s really difficult to pinpoint the location. Car runs strong, no smoke, no other issues. I’ve pulled the intake, charge pipe, etc. but can’t seem to find the culprIt. I’m going to pull everything again to take another look. This is driving me crazy!

 

[racebuild]

For the amount of oil in the pan in 30 miles, it’s likely the turbo.

 

[KBGT]

Sure it can be the turbo leaking. Or it can be the oil feed fitting. Or massive blow by PVC issues.

I have had many oil leaks over the years, start by cleaning everything, put it all back together and go for a drive. Disassemble and inspect. You have to catch it moving from perfectly clean to starting to leak. It's hard to pinpoint the source once everything is coated in oil.

Here is my current oi leak:

 

[lucky phil]

The easiest way to troubleshoot oil leak locations is to thoroughly clean down the area until it's totally clean and dry then spray the area with dye check developer which leaves a translucent dry white powder residue. Take the car for a drive and when the tiniest oil weep presents the developer shows the location clearly. Yo can then easily remover the developer with the spray cleaner included in the 4 can kit. Kits are relatively cheap. I've had mine for about 10 years and use it for it's original purpose of crack checking engine cases heads etc but I've used the developer at home and on aircraft and race and road engines for oil leak detection. Kits are probably about 30 or 40 dollars US I'd imagine these days.
The other option is fluorescent dye in the engine oil which you can buy and a black light. same prep applies. These techniques are fast and cheap. Well cheaper than hours spent with a torch and mirror and cleaning and driving anyway.
Here's a few images of a cylinder head I had to repair that had porosity that resulted in oil weepage. These heads had a painted finish. You can see the white area which is the spray on developer and the small round dark patches towards the bottom of the white area in the first image are the tiny pin holes of porosity in the casting. Same in the second but the areas are much larger and the porosity worse. It gives you an idea of just how well the developer identifies miniscule leaks. Once I identified the specific area of porosity I could do the repair but the developer works just as well on any connection or leaking joint as well.
With the OP's leak simply idling the engine for 5 min may well be enough to find the leak source. It's a fairly decent leak.

Phil

 

[Amfchang]

Mines is splatter with rocks and dirt everywhere so it maybe looks like that after a 1k miles but not 30miles. There’s gotta be a leak somewhere. If your seals were blown, you’d be blowing smoke out your exhaust for sure.

 

[Amfchang]

Are you running a crankcase breather filter?

 

[LE617Supra]

Are you running a crankcase breather filter?

Yeah, I‘m running the breather in place of the oil cap. The oil is blown everywhere on the side so it makes it really hard to tell where it’s coming from. Going to try dye, I’m just afraid it’s still going to be really hard to isolate.

 

[LE617Supra]

Thanks for all the ideas. I got the car back up on the lift tonight and plan to clean it up again. I’ll try some dye this weekend and hope I have better luck isolating the issues.

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