Oil leak found. For real this time. I hope…

I did a somewhat careful teardown tonight to try to find the source of the oil spew. While there is a wee bit dripping from the return bung on the oil pan, there isn’t enough there to worry about. I’ll fix that later with the parts I already bought a couple years ago.

I found a large amount of oil pooling around the turbo-to-intercooler outlet, so I removed the firewall-side intercooler piping to search for oil. There was a tiny bit of slipperyness inside the tube, but not the pool that I expected. With all of the air piping off the scroll, I put a rag along the sides of the pressure-side output and ran the engine a bit. I got plenty of oil from the return pipe flange.

Once I removed that flange from the turbo and took a good look at it, I saw that the flange itself is quote warped. I have no idea how I didn’t notice that before, but there’s just no way that will ever seal.

It’s too late tonight, but tomorrow, I’m going to see about getting a replacement. I might try a Dodge dealer, or I might try to see if someone can weld a little tubing to a flange. I really hope this is finally the real source of all that oil.