Oil cooler leak

[72firebird]

Well I'm pretty sure that the leak that my car has always had is coming from the oil cooler. I never really bothered with it since it was a slow leak but it's gradually gotten worse and I finally go fed up with it and went to look into it today when I was changing the oil. I went to remove the nut on the oil cooler only to find that it was sooo loose I could turn it with my hand. So I tightened it down.

Now, I've also been loosing coolant, I can tell it's leaking out since I can see it around the same area that the oil was at. I've never taken the oil cooler off and never seen the back side of one (I searched for pictures), if the nut was loose would it be possible I was loosing coolant there also? I don't know if the coolant runs outside of the black section at all.

The water pump gasket was recently replaced, and I don't think that is the source, everything is coming from the passenger side of the motor.

 

[Jan Larsson]

The back of the oil cooler looks identiacl more or less to the oilfilter groove with the thick rubber gasket so I would advice to take it apart and replace that gasket using one from a new oil filter.

The coolent in and outlet is where the pipes with short hoses connect to the oil cooler so unless there's a hole inside of the cooler somewhere (which I doubt) you can't get coolant in there. Maybe the short rubber hoses (with the 4 clamps) have some cracks and some coolent loss is coming from there and you just see it on the outside of the cooler mixed with the oil you lost ...

I got plenty of pictures I can post if you need some just let me know and I'll digg them out for you.

 

[nwarky]

oil/coolant leak

Jared,

A few months back when changing the turbo on Jason's TTA we found out that one of the coolant hoses to the oil filter housing was as brittle as could be and therefore replaced them both. I'm betting that the coolant is coming from one of those short hoses particularly if they are the originals. I'd look carefully at them before replacing anything else.

Dean Papageorge

 

[72firebird]

I've had the coolant hoses off before and they seemed to be in alright shape, but I guess I'll take them off again and take the cooler completely off to check everything out to make sure.

Thanks guys.