[Vicinity]

Hey guys, good day! Today a friend and I did done an oil/filter change. I was (and possibly still am) wondering how I've been losing oil slowly lately. The gasket of the drain plug bolt had been withering away on examination of each change. We'd noted this, so this time I picked up a recommended part from the parts store. It was an 'oversized' bolt. What the heck? Its almost as if their system automatically assumed that the foundation was stripped already. I will not pop that. I just took the gasket from the oversized one and applied it to the original bolt. Maybe I will check if ford has something legitimate for the next change.

The oil filter change was actually very smoothly changed this time, its always been a huge *****; you know it. I think this time I picked up the right strap-style wrench. We inverted the wrench and it popped out soonly. Took turns screwing it in by hand, so much as to not injure ourself in that sinister cage. Putting it back in was ok, shining a light in the right place helped us remember that god awful angle it threads into.

This wasnt an issue before but the pic posted was before the change, if Im lucky the ancient bolt gasket was the culprit over the last months.

 

[Kenz]

As we all know the oil filter is in a pretty bad spot. I change the oil on my other cars and do the whole job without spilling a drop on the floor. I put down cardboard when I change the Cougars oil; I'm gonna spill ...
It looks like a lot of oil underneath for just the drain plug. I suspect you may have a leak elsewhere too.

 

[XR7-4.6]

Every time I tried to not spill a drop of oil changing the filter from the stock location I just made a bigger mess 😆

I just buy one of those Dorman M14 drain plug kits every other oil change using the rubber washer in the kit no more than twice, though the other ones work ok as well, the nylon ones work second best, the copper ones are stupid and terrible, those MIGHT have a chance of sealing if they had ridges like the crush washers for banjo bolts but they don’t

 

[Vicinity]

Kenz, I think I had the leak unnoticed for several months. I may have just assumed the reason I was slowly adding oil was because I was burning it. Doesn't seem so now. You may be correct though, now that a night has passed since the gasket swap, I noticed a single drip of oil. I am now parked over cardboard to see if I can gauge the severity a little more. The oil filter did come off suspiciously easily lol. I'll check around the forums to see points of failure

XR7, thanks - yeah I'll take any recommendation I can get for addressing the bolt issue. I probably should be putting less stock into parts store suggestions

Grr

 

[Grog6]

If It's like my cars, the front main seal leaks, the rear main seal leaks, and about every 100k miles, you'll be replacing the oil filter adapter gasket.

 

[Vicinity]

It'd been a slow few drips a day, but today it was a fountain. I lost a lot of oil, gotta tow. Bad day.

 

[Vicinity]

Things are getting interesting and nearly derailing off of topic. I jammed a coolant pan under the car once I discovered this leak was severe. I looked down through the bay to see if more oil accumulated since then. I turned the engine on briefly to see if more oil would come out. It is very obviously a fuel line spraying, and quite a bit. The gas must have picked up so much historical dirt and oil that it had the appearance.

But... why. Maybe a week or so prior to this oil change, I took this into a shop asking them to check vacuum leaks. A few hours later they told me they need to clean the fuel injectors and MAF sensor. (That poor MAF gets cleaned a lot heh). They said they'd cycle it to pass emissions inspection. The car dash was super hot when I picked it up. If I recall correctly, a friend told me that I need to get the car very hot for good luck on emissions testing.

Whatever they did cured the knocking issue I had by about 95%.
(It was bad before. If ever the temperature was over 70F outside, the hills were embarrassing to climb. One instance I was in front of a EV, 😓 )

The check engine light still hasn't come back on. It's been about two months.

I imagine the shop didn't need to be kinetically twiddling around the area (point of failure photos below), and likely didn't

Or was it something we did when I lifted the car to change the oil filter. We tend to place the lift arms around this area. Photo below is from when I changed out the old fuel filter a year from now. You can see the yellow arm on the right. Sometimes we get it pretty close to the shield that is normally over this thing. I wonder if this was a stress on the fuel line.

But why now, is it spraying? It'd been driven daily until that point. We are in the peak of a week long 100F heat wave. Otherwise not much is different.

I rushed to turn off the car, so I didn't identify the troubled line but I believe it to be the cleaned part near the sleeve. Is the sleeve standard, or was it there to fix this in the past?

Theres also a sleeve downstream of the filter, is that standard?

I wonder if the injectors were cleaned with flush chemical in the tank, therefor corroding the sleeve...

 

[MadMikeyL]

It’s hard to tell what we are looking at in the second picture, but the sleeve in the first picture is on an EVAP line, so that wouldn’t be an active fuel leak. You don’t need to run the car to find the leak. Have someone cycle the key on and off while you look at it. Whenever the key is turned on, it runs the fuel pump for a second or 2 to prime the system, and that should allow you to find the fuel leak.

 

[Vicinity]

Good idea Mike, it is indeed the line above. At this point, should I have other lines replaced? I cant DIY this one

 

[T6Rocket]

Sounds like the fuel line was pinched when the car was jacked up.

Pinging on a stock MN-12 is 99% caused by the MAF. They only really get dirty if you have a K&N filter. A new MAF is the best $100 I've ever spent. I replaced it on both of my T-Birds and didn't have any more pinging after that. One MAF was bad, the other just made the car ping at WOT.

If you get pinging at part throttle, that is really bad. I've never had that before, only WOT.

Al

 

[Vicinity]

Oh it was really painful. If I went off the the throttle and went back on to it, it usually stopped it. But I dont think she knocks at all anymore. I was excited to bring her up to good speeds again but now I gotta wait =_=

 

[3_97_sports]

One of my cars pings horribly after my pi swap and 91 tune.
Light throttle sounds like a can of marbles, but if you tap the brake with your other foot, the converter unlocks and the pinging goes away and power replaces the pinging.
I got the tune altered because I couldn't find ethanol free gas here, but the pinging is still horrible.

 

[Grog6]

That much pinging is not good; try pulling the octane plug, and seeing if that function was retained in your tune.Oherwise, you need to datalog it, and get with your tuner. Pinging is detonation, and it will eventually break rings and other stuff.