Crankcase leak

Oil leak at crank case.

On Friday, my car died in the middle of the road after 5 mins from the house. Cranked but couldn’t get it going.

Long story short, turned out that there is oil leak spilled to sensors and it couldn’t read properly. Hopefully there is nothing more than just oil leak and seal change.
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Good find, Pengster.

I'll add that to my bizzare-causes-for-failures list.

 

Do you know if it was oil dripping on the sensor head, or was oil getting into the plugs? I see your upper sensor (right bank) connector rubber boot is split. i.e. on the car side of the connector.

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The sensor position on the 2.7 car is an endless source of confusion. The lower one is for the left bank. The upper one, on the left hand side of the engine (as viewed from the rear of the car), is for the right bank.

 

I don’t know just as yet as my Mechanic will start working on it tomorrow, will keep you posted.

 

The sensors in the picture are crank sensors, not "cam" as wrote onto the picture. The camshaft sensor is a single one thats on the R/H head in the 1 o clock position from the oil filter.
On quite a few crank sensors that i have seen have some kind of oil residue on them. After all there tucked away, especially the one positioned at 9 o'clock of the crank pulley.
If there is a problem with the car not starting , and its been diagnosed to be with one of the two crankshaft sensors. I would say its not because its got oil on it, but its a dying sensor. There not hard to replace, just remember to look out for the spacer shim behind them.
Please let us know the out come.
I do hope its not such a bad oil leak thats coming from the crank seal, i hope its not . This is not an easy job due to the pulley can not be removed with out either moving tbe engine back or engine removal. So fingers crossed its a faulty sensor or upper cam seal.
All the above is just my opinion og course.

 

I had same problem years ago from a bad Gary Sharpe engine rebuild. Had a bad oil leak that leaked onto one of my crank sensors and car would only run on 4 cylinders. Leak was cam seal and crank seal.

 

Moderator! Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to delete photos in my posts. The irony is that I labelled the photo "crank sensors.jpg" on my desktop.

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Mate i was fully aware that you knew your mistake because i read your posts and know you know what you are talking about. I only corrected the mistake for the original poster to save confusion.

 

Unfortunately the engine had to come out . The 2 crank sensors are literally brand new as We just changed them when I did clutch changes.

Will keep you posted

 

in the industrial world ive seen oil seep into sensors with no effect, then ive seen them fail in the same situations.

 

Those sensors seem to be hermetically sealed. I'd be more inclined to think that the connector plugs below the sensors were contaminated. Or can the sheer volume of oil on the sensor heads affect the inductance?

 

I had an oil leak on a mercedes drip oil onto the O2 sensor plug and it started giving all kinds of goofy lambda readings causing a cel light. after some contact cleaner it was fine. Oil and electricity can be strange, ive seen reducers at work leak oil and soak a motor and it will run another 5 years but get that crap on the wrong connection and poof no workie. It could be the type of oil to though.