Looking for suggestions on an oil leak
 

I have an 82 with a 90 13b. It's got an SE front cover and a mechanical oil metering pump. I'm tracking down an oil leak and hoping to get some input.

Recently the bottom passenger side of the car has become totally soaked with oil after driving. The tray under the radiator, the steering linkage, the engine, the chassis to the back side of the wheel well. So it's a lot of oil. I put the car up on stands and took off the pan and cleaned everything up.

When I run the car up on stands, I can't see that there's oil leaking from anywhere. It's just not leaking. I've run it up to 4k RPM and still not been able to reproduce the leak.

I put the car back together and went for a drive and sure enough, the oil's all over again. So I put it back up on stands and cleaned it up again. It's now drying off.

This has me thinking that it might be related to the oil metering pump, since it's closed at lower engine speeds. The problem is that the pump is almost impossible to see and access on the 13b with the engine support running across the front and all the intake plumbing at the top.

I'm going to run it at higher engine speed when it dries off to see if I can make the leak show up.

I have 2 questions:

1) If it does turn out to be the OMP, how easy is it to get off? I have a feeling there's alot of disassembly involved.

2) Any other thoughts on what I should look for or do to find the leak?

If it's your OMP it's easy to fix. There's an o-ring that goes around it. According to what you say, it's pushing too much oil out to be the omp. Pics would help to give you more info. Your engine could be leaking from anywhere.

MOP isn't that hard to get to. 2bolts, 4 lines and a cotter pin removes it. It does get hard to see what you're doing. Fwiw, the MOP is never 'off', even at idle it does pump some oil. Is the MOP itself covered with oil? If not it may still be the oil pan that only leaks during cornering. Another possibility is one of the MOP lines. The rubber elbows tend to split where wire clamps are. The elbows are usually long enough that I've been able to cut off the elbow where the clamp was and reattach the line.

Well, I think I tracked down the leak. Again, I started up the car and let it run for a while. I tugged on the OMP for a while but didn't find any leaks. There's nothing dripping anywhere.

The only thing I could think of is that maybe it takes airflow for the leak to show up. If that's the case, it must be the oil cooler. I'd been keeping my eye on it this whole time and there wasn't a drip, but I took my air hose and blew through the cooler. Sure enough, little oil droplets started spewing through it.

There must not be enough oil pressure running through the bottom row in the cooler to make it seep. But when you run air through it, it lowers the air pressure enough to pull the oil out of the cooler.

Now I need to see if this thing can be fixed.

i had a leak in the same area. turned out one of the lines from my omp had a cut in it right in the little bend it makes where it comes out of the omp.

Good catch, I wasn't even thinking of the oil cooler. Keep in mind that it has a thermostat which bypasses the main cooler until the oil gets up to temp.

Just to close this out. It was definitely the oil cooler. I installed a replacement and the car's tight as a drum. It's nice not to have a puddle to clean up after the car's been parked, unfortunately, the damage to my garage floor has already been done.

acetone will take care of that real quick..i did my driveway with it.

:AA:

I've never heard of using acetone. What does it do to the oil? I use cat litter. I spread it on the stain and grind it into the cement with my foot. It soaks up the oil and leaves a spot just a little darker than the surrounding cement.

acetone is used for thinning paint. pour alittle on the spot, brush with a stiff bristle brush, then soak up with a rag or paper towels. may have to do it a couple times. the spot will get much lighter. the thinning of the oil allows it to be absorbed out of the concrete.