Oil leak from throttle body

[L1011tristar17]

For the past two or three weeks my car has been leaking oil and burning it off somewhere under the hood. When I took my car in for inspection I asked the guys to check for where the oil was leaking and they told me that it was the driver's side valve cover. I replaced those only a few months ago, so they may have come loose but it's odd that only one side would do that. Anyways I drove home and removed the air cleaner to get a better look. Sure enough, there was oil on that cover but it was all over the top too, which wouldn't make sense if it was leaking from the gasket. I looked under the throttle body (?) and saw some oil dripping from there. Not enough to notice but it was leaking all over the valve cover and I can imagine that leaking oil + hot valve cover = burning oil smell.

How should I go about fixing this? Is it as simple as installing a new gasket? I did manage to get a picture and a video of the leak.



Not the best picture but you can see where the stream of oil goes down the cover. The video does a better job of showing where the leak is.

Any thoughts?

[marquisman]

Me thinks you gots some blow by pooling up in the IAC area. I can see from the pic, the inside of the TB is fairly oily. Pull the PCV valve and screen and see what you got. Pull the IAC and clean it out and replace the gasket.

[1980c10]

Yup gotta change that screen about every 50,000 mile or it start making weird oil leaks.

[VicCrownVic]

Me thinks you gots some blow by pooling up in the IAC area. I can see from the pic, the inside of the TB is fairly oily. Pull the PCV valve and screen and see what you got. Pull the IAC and clean it out and replace the gasket.

My TB had the same issue of oil getting in like marquisman is talking about, It looked way worse than that pic though and idled real strange at stop lights. The oil didn't leak from the TB though it was just sucked into the intake on mine, I noticed at about 30s on the vid it looks like the nut is missing on the mounting stud for your TB but I would more expect that to leak coolant from between the EGR spacer and TB.

Any way do like marquiman says, check PCV, pull and clean that IAC. On mine I also took the whole TB and EGR off and cleaned both of those as well, but you would need to get new gaskets for all of that and pulling the TB off is probably not necessary (I just wanted mine to be as clean as I could get it).

[L1011tristar17]

Earlier today I pulled off the intake manifold and took out the PCV screen. It was a mess! Got a new screen to go in but I am a little worried about the grommet. It pretty much pulls in and out without any effort. Plus it's a fairly new grommet as well; I only bought it a few months ago. So I'm waiting on a new one to come in tomorrow and see if I have any luck with that one.

I also gave the IAC a good cleaning. EGR looks OK but it could probably use a new gasket. Vacuum lines look great, but those were replaced not to long ago.

[L1011tristar17]

Finally finished everything today. PCV screen and grommet were both junk, so I junked those. I installed a new screen, grommet, and EGR gasket. There was an unbelievable amount of oil/carbon in the intake and a couple of the passageways by the EGR were completely covered with carbon. I cleaned those out the best I could and as a result the car seems to run much better! I also started running it on mid-grade (89 octane) so the engine performs better, idles quieter, and doesn't make funny sounds going up hills. With all that plus the new brakes the car feels like it's 100,000 miles younger!

[87gtVIC]

When my dad owned my Vic he always put in the mid grade gas. When I started driving it in 06 he said you don't really need it. I believe it even says what grade of fuel to use in the owners manual. Well I started out using the lowest grade but occasionally switched to the middle grade and I too can notice a difference in how she runs.