Oozing

[Simon Norris]

My 2.0 HPC has a small oil leak. When driven hard (i.e. at track days) a trickle of oil seeps out from under the edge of the plate that covers the top of the transmission tunnel, just ahead of the gear lever. It runs down the side of the transmission tunnel but is only evident on the passenger side. It would probably be concealed if I had luxuries such as transmission tunnel trim or carpeting.

 

I have the bellhousing dry sump system and Quaife straight cut gearbox. The oil appears to be coming from somewhere rearward of the bellhousing, as there is no leaking visible from the engine bay. Has anyone else seen anything similar? Is it gearbox oil? The gearbox was removed and serviced by James Whiting/Quaife earlier in the year, but the leak was visible before and after the work was done (and no I didn't get it fixed at the same time - it's a long story).

 

Any help/advice appreciated.

Simon.

[Peter Carmichael]

The gearbox has a breather. This is probably throwing out a bit of oil. If you were to go to someone like Phil Stewart at Road and Race Transmissions, he has a plate that replaces the standard breather with an attachment point for a pipe. You can run this into a catch/expansion tank (a smallbrake fluid reservoir works well). If you pipe into the bottom of the tank, the oil that gets thrown out gets sucked back in when everything is cooling off after you shutdown and you have no more oil turning up inside the car.