It just suddenly started making a slight hissing noise upon the first startup of the day one day, but obviously only under boost. It sounded like it was coming from inside the dash when I first heard it, I thought it was the AC evaporator leaking or something.
Eventually with a bit of driving I realised it was a boost leak due to the sound and when it was occurring. No loss of power though.
No problem I thought, its done 270kkm, probably just one of the intercooler hoses has split. I didn't get a chance to look at it that day.
The next day its still doing it (damn it hasn't fixed itself!), then it suddenly gets really quite loud during one of many bursts of acceleration/boost. There is still no real noticeable loss of power though. But its a very very loud hissing sound now. So I had to make time to take a look today.
Hmm, nothing out of the ordinary from a visual inspection. So I pressurised the turbo inlet with my compressor (after blocking the PCV), it doesn't gain any pressure. There is an air escaping noise over by the inlet manifold. So I isolate just the turbo, intercooler, and boost hoses, and they all pressurise just fine.
But putting the air directly into the manifold doesn't build any pressure, and there is a sound of escaping air towards the back of the manifold but its hard to tell where exactly. If I had to guess I'd say its under the manifold towards the firewall.
There is so much oil down that side of the engine anyway, always has been, from the leaky manifold flap spindles. So there is no may an oil trail will show me where it is, even if I could see up under there.
Does anyone have an easy clever solution for trying to find out exactly where its leaking from? Its very very difficult to see up under there, and you can't reach under there either.
I'd hate to have to pull the manifold only to find that its scrap. That would have the car off the road for quite a while looking for a cheap replacement (good deals are hard to come by in Oz).
If its just one of the spindles that has somehow popped out then I can finally get round to removing and plugging them permanently, which won't have the car off the road for too long. But what would have happened to the flap that the spindle was holding????
Eventually with a bit of driving I realised it was a boost leak due to the sound and when it was occurring. No loss of power though.
No problem I thought, its done 270kkm, probably just one of the intercooler hoses has split. I didn't get a chance to look at it that day.
The next day its still doing it (damn it hasn't fixed itself!), then it suddenly gets really quite loud during one of many bursts of acceleration/boost. There is still no real noticeable loss of power though. But its a very very loud hissing sound now. So I had to make time to take a look today.
Hmm, nothing out of the ordinary from a visual inspection. So I pressurised the turbo inlet with my compressor (after blocking the PCV), it doesn't gain any pressure. There is an air escaping noise over by the inlet manifold. So I isolate just the turbo, intercooler, and boost hoses, and they all pressurise just fine.
But putting the air directly into the manifold doesn't build any pressure, and there is a sound of escaping air towards the back of the manifold but its hard to tell where exactly. If I had to guess I'd say its under the manifold towards the firewall.
There is so much oil down that side of the engine anyway, always has been, from the leaky manifold flap spindles. So there is no may an oil trail will show me where it is, even if I could see up under there.
Does anyone have an easy clever solution for trying to find out exactly where its leaking from? Its very very difficult to see up under there, and you can't reach under there either.
I'd hate to have to pull the manifold only to find that its scrap. That would have the car off the road for quite a while looking for a cheap replacement (good deals are hard to come by in Oz).
If its just one of the spindles that has somehow popped out then I can finally get round to removing and plugging them permanently, which won't have the car off the road for too long. But what would have happened to the flap that the spindle was holding????