Oil Leaks

[JeffW]

Some of my lines coming from the oil tank and around the engine are leaking oil. Should I unscrew them and put teflon tape on them or do I need to buy new lines? they seem to be leaking at the screw in portion and all look to be high pressure lines.I put a pan under my car 2 weaks ago and it has close to a quart of oil in it now... I'm leaking from those lines, the sump gasket, the oil drain plug, and a few other places... sucks to be me.

[Jim Sims]

The screwed joints in the oil lines under the engine and to the oil tank do not seal on the threads so Teflon tape or other thread sealant is not useful. These joints have two metal spherical surfaces (male and female or ball and socket) which are pressed together by the mechanical action of the threaded nut. The spherical design allows the joints to be adjusted to ease assembly and tolerance problems. The sealing contact is normally metal to metal but I've also heard of poor condition (scratched, etc.) oil line spherical surfaces being put together with a light coating of orange Loctite (Loctite 574 engine case selant). The one exception underneath is the "S" hose from the tank to the engine mounted oil cooler; this hose is clamped down on hose barbs using hose clamps. To address your leaks if they're truly coming from the screwed fittings: next oil change after draining the oil from the tank and engine sump I'd undo the lines, clean the fittings well, inspect the spherical surfaces, apply Loctite 574 if scratched, then reassemble. Use an anti-seize compound (like Neverseze) on the oil line fitting threads but not on the spherical sealing surfaces. I believe most of your fitting nuts will require a 36 mm oil line wrench although sometimes you can get by with a big Cresent wrench (open end adjustable wrench) or a Stilson wrench (Monkey wrench) if you don't have the externally mounted oil cooler with the lines going forward. I would not recommend trying to take off the hard line at the underneath engine fitting as this joint is very hard to access without special wrenches. It will be easier if you jack up the car and remove the right rear wheel; put the rear of the car on jackstands for safety reasons. I'd try the above first as the oil lines are not cheap; I would replace the "s" hose if it's older than 5 years as it tends to get "baked" by the heat coming off the adjacent heater box. There is a way to salvage an oil line that is leaking at the hose to fitting interface which is a hose barb with swaged sleeve securing the hose to the barb. These swaged sleeves can be carefully cut off (without damaging the hose underneath) with an abrasive cut-off disk mounted in a Dremel tool. Then the hose can be tightened back down using standard hose clamps or one can also use new hose and hose clamps on the the original fittings. This way one can reuse the expensive and difficult to locate DIN oil line fittings. Probably more than you wanted to read. Cheers, Jim

[yelcab1]

Thank you Jim for the reuse the fitting advice. I needed that.

In my case, I have replaced all of the thermostat to engine hoses because they were just leaking and old.

The new hoses fit and work great. The special 36 mm oil hose wrench required if you are going to mess with the fender mounted thermostat fiiting. $45 well spent if you own a Porsche.