Hi everyone,

After rebuilding my engine and assembling everything together, my son and I have been breaking the motor in, but their was an oil leak that I couldn't figure out. It was seeping along the oil pan gasket, but I put a new pan and brace on the motor when I was assembling it (motor upside down) as I figured (and further confirmed from this forum) it would be best to assemble the pan with the engine out. I used Hondabond and had the pan sit undisturbed for 2 weeks while I assembled everything else around the motor. (Side note: Assembly of all the lines, turbos, miscellaneous stuff takes as long, if not longer, than the motor itself!)

After looking around the engine, I could see oil up the front and middle iron. The middle iron could be the dreaded oil filler gasket (which was also new) but the front iron stumped me, especially since it appeared to start high, but the banjo bolt for the turbo oil feed hose was dry. I searched the forums and someone had posted that their AC/PS belt was too tight and could've been pulling on that side of the engine? I'm not entirely sure about it, but seeing as I could see oil around the area, I decided to take a look. After removing the the PS pump, I found that we forgot to attach the 2 bolts that hold the bracket to the front iron. I'm not sure how it was missed, but in the picture below, circled in red, you can see their are no bolts.

Could this cause the oil leak?

I do have some UV dye that I'll try next, but I wanted to clean it up a little before I start it, and I found that the missing bolts.

 

Check the oil feed banjo hardline coming off of the front iron.

 

Thank you; that is dry too. During the rebuild, I put in new crush washers and torqued those down to spec. I was worried about all the oil leaks that could occur so I got new washers/gaskets at the junctions.

 

Alright, so I ran the UV dye and oil is coming out between the front iron and the front rotor housing near the banjo bolt for the turbo oil line. It runs down the block and into the oil pan, then out the back. The iron is new but I reused everything else. I did check/measure the rotor housings and they did pass but maybe I missed something.

 

In case someone else searches, I think the culprit is the dowel o-ring. It's right in the general vicinity and I'm not the only one that has had this problem. Looks like the engine has to come out again.

 

You pinched the dowel pin o-ring when assembling? I'm sure you used new oem, one trick is to use a couple small dabs of hylomar to help hold them all in place.