Good evening,

A few months ago I bought a R53 Cooper Works from 2004 with 103.000 km (living in Europe . The car runs great. But I was disappointed when I took a look beyond the car. There were a lot of oil leaks. The top of the engine is dry. By now I have changed the oil pan seal but there are still some leaks on other places. I will change the O ring from the crank sensor which is a common problem. There is some oil /grease I cannot diagnose the origin. It looks like brown grease. It is located in the region of the pulley above the chain case. It splits to the back. First I thought it came from the damper of the belt tensioner which is by the way no more working and has to be replaced, but I think this damper works by gas ?! The seal of the chain seems not to leak.

In the attachment you will find some pictures.

I'm grateful for any suggestion !!!

Cheers I cleaned some time before so there are just a few splits

 

Thoroughly check your CV boots for tiny openings/cracks. Mine had this thick grease spatter in that area and it turned out both boots were cracked flinging grease around.

 

CV Boots.....

 

Thanks for the feedback. The cv boots looked fine for me but i will look again for little cracks ! The car isn't at my home. I will go for it in a few days and will keep you posted !! Thx Raoul

 

The oil filter housing is on the back side of the engine, toward the passenger side. You can see the heat exchanger for it in the first picture just below the oil filter cap, it has the two houses coming off it. The gasket for the filter housing can be leaking with the kilos you have.

 

Hi,

Sorry for the late response. You were both right !! It was a very small crack in the inner CV Boot. The grease apparrently isn't the same as for the outer Boots as I know it to be in black. I just put black grease in it and fixed the CV Boot with 'shoe gue' which by now seems to hold .
I replaced the old tensioner and the idler pulley.
So this work is done.

As a lot of problems come together, I had a broken core heater (matrix heater) which leakded. I noticed it by a wet carped, the smell of the hot coolant and the fog on the windshield. I replaced the heater and by this occasion I flushed the old cooland too and replaced it by some Bahrdahl L.R. -25C Type D red Coolant.
Everything seems to work fine. The temperature of the air (with an without A/C) works perfekt at cold and hot temperature. Just the pipes and the heater core are very hot. You feel the heet through the plastic cover of the heater !! This wasn't the case with the old water in the system ! I put a diagnosis software on the car which indicates a heat exchanger temperature of +/- 52 degrees celcius when the ventilating sysem si of. It goes up to max. 80 degrees when I put on the ventilation sytem on max. Are these temperatures normal ? Do you too have a very hot foot near the exchanger ?

I great thanks for your time and help !!!