Mysterious oil leak Options

[Curvie Roadlover]

I have an oil leak on my '76 that seems to not follow usual patterns. The leak only occurrs when the car is warming up. It doesn't leak when it's just sitting and it doesn't leak near as bad (almost not at all) once the car warms up. It drips off the oil filter, but I can see the oil dripping from the oil cooler above, onto the filter. At it's worst, it drips about a drop a second. I suspect the oil cooler seals, but, wouldn't that leak all the time, not just at warm-up? And it certainly seems like the drip wouldn't slow down when the car is warmed up if it was the cooler seals. I also kept an eye on the oil pressure sensor and didn't see any oil leaking in that area. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)
Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
Tom

[TonyAKAVW]

I'm troubleshooting an oil leak myself and had a drip from the same general area. I had drip problems at all times though, so it may be different. I'll tell you about my findings, which may or may not be helpful to you.

So as in your case, the oil was coming from above. I first checked the oil pressure sender as it is easily fixed and a likely cause. It seemed okay, it wasn't leaking from the top, as apparently is common. So I figuered it must be the oil cooler. Not wanting to drop the engine, I did the seal replacement job. My seals were old and were a little cracked, but after putting in the new seals, the problem was still there. By the way, the oil cooler seal replacement job is not fun... Its right up there with putting the resevoir tubes into a new master cylinder.

A few weeks ago I enlisted the help of a couple friends to help drop the engine. After dropping the engine and removing all the tin, manifold, throttle body, etc. etc. I noticed that the pressure sender had some kind of plastic wrapped around it, and that this plastic went beneath the cooler and seemed to be very hard. I think what happened is the guy who installed the sender didn't realize that part of the packaging was still on the sender... Either way, it looks as though thats where the leak was coming from. I'm taking my oil cooler out to be tested tomorrow, so thats the deciding factor.

My reccomendation is check out the pressure sender, by taking it off and putting it back on, or even replacing it (it's cheap) and then do the seal replacement as per the pelican article, and if that fails, drop the engine and check the cooler. Beyond that I understand there are a couple other things that can go wrong up there, but those are the major ones.

-Tony