Need some help identifying the source of lots of oil in my engine compartment. (pics below)
This is a 2007 C4S with abt. 41k miles on it. Yep, daily driver here in the DC area.

It looks like oil for sure, but from where?? It looks like the oil is coming from a seam at the air intake on the left side.

UPDATE: Took the airbox off. Found that the inside of the throttle body was somewhat greasy as well. I took a pic of the inside of the intake tube. It had some grease on the inside, near the throttle body. Also seemed to have some grease spattered farther inside. I did not see any oil in the airbox itself.

There's also wet oil at the top end of this small tube (pic) and quite a bit of oil caked down at the bottom end of that tube (abt 10" away) where it connects to the engine block. What is that tube even for?

Based on how much oil was caked around the bottom of that tube (a lot), I would venture that the oil is coming up from the bottom of that tube, going into the throttle body and into the intake runners, where it's leaking at the seams.

Any chance I overfilled the oil and this is the result? Any thoughts on what I'm looking at here?

Thanks in advance,
Jim

 

Had a potentially similar leak on my car - the intake runner on one side was oily. Seemed that it was the hose clamps on the intake runner. I cleaned it, tightened them a little and it went away. DON'T over tighten the hose clamps. Seems like a silly arrangement with hose clamps, but that's what it is. Even though there is no oil there, mine looked like oil as well. Give it a shot.

 

RyeM3,
I'll give that a try.
Thanks,
Jim

 

Let us know what you find out. Why do you think you overfilled?

 

The last pic looks like a tube off an AOS (air oil separator). Basically it's an overly complex PCV on Porsche which for emissions control, feeds oil mist back thru the throttle body to be burned off in normal combustion process.

It really shouldn't be "pooling" in the tube (or the TB)... just residue from a mist. If it is pooling, your AOS could be going bad (possible from overfill too depending on how much way over). Or, based on your avatar, how much heavy duty track time does your car see. Have you gotten any oil starvation symptoms coming out of hard corners?

 

Thanks for the replies. As for the overfilling, I sort of remember finding the oil level lower than expected and topping it off and ending up with all the oil indicator bars being illuminated, even the short one at the top. If I went over, it probably wasn't more than by about 250ml, if I had to guess.

As for track time, I haven't been to the track in over two years at this point

Researching more into this air oil separator angle online, it's looking very likely to be the culprit.

 

Oil over fill can be just as bad as too little oil.

 

Scary! I hope you figure this one out.

 

I'm going to clean off the surfaces on engine properly so I can see if any more oil is continuing to get up there. From reading the stories online, substantially overfilling the oil can actually ruin the entire engine. Didn't know that before. Assuming this is from overfilling, it looks like I got lucky.

 

I'd still be blaming loose hose clamps here and not sweat it.