300Tdi oil leak

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fishsponge

fishsponge

New Member
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Location
Cambridgeshire, UK
First of all, let's try to keep this one below 32 pages!

Secondly, my 300Tdi Disco has an oil leak. Surprise, surprise.

I'm not losing much. In fact, i've not topped it up in 7,000 miles. It was on maximum and is now two thirds of the way towards minimum.

So not too bad.

However, i'd like it fixed. I was told by the previous owner that the "rear crankshaft problem" that is common to these had already been done, so hopefully it's not that.

Trouble is, I can't track it down. It's not coming from anywhere obvious, it's just everywhere in small quantities. There doesn't appear to be any oil coming from high up in the engine bay.

Anyway... do these pictures give any clues, or is it useless searching for an oil leak by looking at pictures?? I assume it probably is, but worth a try!

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Last edited:
Hi fish, If i were you i would thoroughly clean the whole area,then keep an eye on it,your more likely to spot the source of the leak.cheers elt.
 
that's mostly what i've done tonight... i've not washed it all off, but wiped it all off instead. Kinda hard to do given that a lot of the lower engine has waxoyl overspray on it though! lol

I'll see how it looks tomorrow lunchtime after my trip to work!

I guess part of the reason for asking for advice is that I don't know where on a car engine oil can actually come from. Obviously everywhere a join is present, but places I would assume a join exists there might not be one, and places where it looks seamless, there might be a join!!

Anyway, i'll check it tomorrow! :D
 
Common places for oil to start leaking: Vacuum pump, Past the O-ring on the cyclone breather, and judging by the pics, it looks as though your front crankshaft oil seal may be shot, with oil then blowing back over the sump when the Disco is moving.

HTH,
Lew
 
ok, so assuming the cyclone breather is the thing that sits above the glow plugs, there's certainly no oil coming from there.

Where is the vacuum pump situated?

As for the front crank seal being potentially shot, where would I look to see that? presumably behind the lowest pulley on the auxiliary/drive belt, right? i.e. the one that is atached to the crank shaft.

If it is that, is it a big job? sounds like it is to me...
 
There is a wading plug hole in the bottom of the front cover, you can see the timing belt through it, wipe that area clean, if it gets wet then front crank seal or camshaft seal is leaking.

Also check oil filter and oil filter to engine bracket, the drain pipes from cyclone breather to crankcase and rocker box to crankcase, clean the flywheel housing wading plug hole and check that later too, wipe all round rocker box gasket area including the back, try those for starters :)
 
As mentioned above, if it's done 7000 which is generally past service time anyway, and it's used maybe a litre of oil, then it's probably not that bad really, how long did the 7000 miles take?

If it's 6 months or so then the oil should have been topped up before then.

When it's dropping from max to min in a couple of weeks and your driveway looks like the aftermath of the Exxon valdez, that's when you have a problem :)
 
it is indeed past service time. I meant to do it a thousand miles ago, but bit broke atm. Also, the 7,000 miles was done 5.5 months.

Thanks for the pointers on where to check - i'll make sure I clean all those areas tomorrow and then keep an eye on them! First thing to do next month is to change the oil & fix the leak if it's simple enough!

Couple of questions... how much of a job is it to fix a crankshaft oil seal, or a camshaft oil seal?

I guess the rocker box cover just has a gasket, so that'll be simple.

Also, you say "There is a wading plug hole in the bottom of the front cover"... i'm not entirely sure where that is at the moment, so i'm gonna go find a diagram on the web!! :D
 
So, next question... should I have fitted wading plugs given that i've spent probably a grand total of around 15 minutes actually driving through water as deep as 2ft, but mostly not that deep?

Most of the driving was done 10-15 seconds at a time (through deep puddles) with many minutes between puddles and across several pay & play days, several weeks apart?

In other words, have I potentially buggered something up by doing what I've done?
 
To change the front crankshaft oil seal, you'll have to remove the timing belt, slide the crank pulley off the crank shaft, remove the old seal and replace with a new one. Changing the seal isn't the hard part part, but reassembling the cam belt setup correctly can be a bit tricky if you've never done it before.
 
DiscoLew said:
To change the front crankshaft oil seal, you'll have to remove the timing belt, slide the crank pulley off the crank shaft, remove the old seal and replace with a new one. Changing the seal isn't the hard part part, but reassembling the cam belt setup correctly can be a bit tricky if you've never done it before.
Click to expand...

Dont forget to remove the timing pin - causes a bit of a mess if ya dont :D
 
ok, well that's a task that's way out of my skill and confidence range, so if the oil leak isn't too bad i'll just leave it. Unless it's somewhere simple, of course, and then i'll fix it!

Anyone fancy answering my wading plug question 3 posts earlier?? :D
 
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