The astute observer will notice through this project that the car has always had an oil leak of some sort. While it has been a little better recently, there’s still oil escaping the car. There have been two main sources of the oil so far: The turbo lines under high pressure and the valve cover vent tube under hard cornering. The valve cover problem is not a real big deal to me and can be fixed with a second catch can and/or installing a baffle of some sort on the valve cover. The turbo oil line problem, however, is a bit more concerning. This has manifested itself in the past when the car is super cold — as in, below freezing — and the oil pressure is very high. I actually filled the cabin with oil smoke once because the oil was spraying out of the oil line and onto the exhaust.
While at Nationals, the car started to hemorrhage oil at a much faster rate. The drive back to Cleveland consumed about a gallon and a half of oil, all of it spraying out the bottom of the car. The oil pressure sender also lost its little thumbscrew that held one of the wires on, so we couldn’t even really monitor the oil pressure.
Before I put the transmission in, I had bought the AN plumbing and braided hose to re-do the oil lines, but I didn’t have a chance to get that done before nationals. So I went ahead and pulled the old lines off and got to work getting them replaced. When I pulled the old feed line off, I put the slightest bit of pressure on it and it wound up snapping in half, so that was a ticking time bomb and the source of all that oil. The new lines are coming together nicely: The feed line is already installed with plain braided stainless line with angled AN fittings and an AN to NPT adapter at each end. The drain line is in progress with the tube-to-AN adapter installed and the tube re-installed to the turbo. Rather than use more copper RTV or the stock SRT-4 gasket, I got the gasket for an old Dodge Stealth from the Dodge dealer since it seems a little sturdier. I also picked up an oil pan at the junk yard so that I can start over and put the return bung in without using any JB Weld.
I needed to run out and get the right sized hole saw, but I did mock up the return line last night. The hose end is angled as is the bulkhead AN fitting, so it looks like once I get the right oil pan in there, the return hose will be a very short, very straight shot right into the oil pan with no chance of interference with the passenger-side axle.
Tonight, I hope to get the new oil pan drilled and install the AN fitting. I hope to also be able to get that new oil pan installed at a minimum, but we’ll see how much motivation I wind up with.