Oil Sender to the Turbo?

[georryan]

Well I saw smoke (small amounts) coming out of my hood today, and I could smell burning oil last night, so I pulled over to a gas station today and checked under my hood. It looks like there has been oil dropping onto my uppipe. I stopped by a mechanic on the way to work today to see what he thought it might be, luckily it was suby mechanic. He said that it was probably an oring or something on some kind of oil sending unit on the back of the engine block. He said it is right above the uppipe.

He said it required taking the uppipe off to get to it.

Has anyone ever changed this before? Is it difficult? He said it could be a three hour job and may cost at most around 250 bucks. He said the parts were cheap too. I'm at work right now so I haven't checked prices. So the price isn't that bad really, but if it isn't difficult it may not cost me any more than 30-40 bucks if I do it myself. I'm just curious what's involved.

-Ryan

[georryan]

bump

[vrg3]

I don't know what "oil sending unit" he's talking about...

Maybe he means the oil feed line for the turbo? I thought that was on the passenger side cylinder head though. There aren't o-rings but each end of that line is a banjo fitting and so has two annealed copper washers.

I don't know whether or not you need to pull the uppipe to access the oil feed for the turbo but I'd believe it.

He thought it would take 3 hours to pull the uppipe and replace an o-ring? That seems long. You spray all the fasteners with lots of PB Blaster, let it sit, and then remove the three top bolts from above and the two lower ones from under the car and pull it out, right? I've never done it myself, though, so maybe I left something out.

Even pulling and reinstalling the turbo doesn't sound like a 3 hour job though, and I'm sure you could access the fitting that way too.

Have you tried degreasing the whole general area to see which part gets greasy again quickly?

[georryan]

This is a pretty recent developement. It's pretty obvious that it is coming from the back of the engine. It is also dropping onto the exhaust uppipe, that is also pretty obvious.

I'm thinking he was giving me a way exagerated time frame. Just incase things were rusted or didn't want to come off easily.

He probably was talking about the oil feed line for hte turbo. He was on the phone at the same time so maybe he was just doing too much at once. It is on the passenger side. It's just below the turbo on the underside of the engine, or so it looks like.

So do you think it is a pretty straight forward job? I think his price also was including doing the valve cover gasket as preventative maintance. He talked about that, but it was unclear if it was in the price or not. It was a quick conversation.

[vrg3]

Someone who's actually done this work or at least pulled a turbo would be more qualified to answer this than I, but yeah, I think it's a pretty straightforward job if it's the oil feed line.

It's probably annoying to keep the copper washers, banjo bolt, and hard oil line all lined up right. You should buy several extra washers (they should only be like 12 cents each at the auto parts store) because you'll probably drop and lose a few.

Valve cover gaskets are also pretty easy to do. I think ciper said he once did it in 15 minutes in a JC Penney parking lot or something. :)

[georryan]

think ciper said he once did it in 15 minutes in a JC Penney parking lot or something.

lol


I may do it myselt then. We'll see. It sounds like it may not be that bad.