2008 Multivan 2.5 tdi oil leak in air inlet before turbo

[Silver Caravelle]

Good day all,
At present, I have not purchased a catch can, as I am still chasing an oil leak and it now does appear a turbo inlet pipe seal was not the culprit. In fact on a positive note there is negligible pcv oil blow by residue either side of the turbo inlet pipe and outlet ( intercooler pipe). The pipe to the intercooler is almost bone dry.

Post some weeks of driving after the engine was decreased is pointing to a leak higher up; and as best as I can view it is likely the rocker cover and less likely the tandem pump gasket.

Any body done a major tear down recently to replace rocker cover and or gasket? Number of hours and approx cost would be useful. This is the version where the intake curls slightly over the rocker cover. There is enough oil dripping down front and more at the back to make for a very oily under tray and oil drips on the driveway.

I think I am over it at present, and my local VW specialist is unable to tackle it due insufficient mechanics at present. So I am going to have track down another specialist ( Melb East).

Regards,

Scott

[Rebuild]

pretty sure you need to remove intake manifold to get to the rocker cover, on a 2.5
If you're mech inclined, here's how to do the manifold,
How to remove Intake Manifold 2.5 174 AXE - The Brick-yard

Haven't done the rocker myself

[Silver Caravelle]

Hi Steve,
Thank you. Yes unfortunately with VW's crazy design, the rocker cover cannot be removed without major front end surgery as described.

Whilst I am mechanical...to a point, I am not prepared to take on large jobs like this anymore. Many thanks for the link.

Scott

[Silver Caravelle]

Hi all,

I forgot to update your all the outcome of this. It turned out to be turbo gasket oil seal to the head. Amazing where oil leaks travel too!

Resulted in a tear down of turbo and manifold whilst at it and made a call to replace the turbo and have the manifold skimmed to ensure no warping. Hopefully won't have to touch this side of the engine for a long time. Replacing the turbo and skinning the manifold ( and new studs and gaskets) was debatable, but if it did stuff up in the next 50,000 ks or so, it would have effectively involved the same job, so bit of a tough call that one..

Cheers, Scott

[Greg Roles]

Interesting Scott, I've never had a OEM tappet cover system fail, but then I don't normally keep my cars beyond 200thou kms. Yeti PCV system at 300thou still going strong, but yeah no doubt they can fail too.

Glad it got solved, and yeah the T5 turbo gasket setup is easy to get wrong / crush / damage, I wrecked one!!