Was installing cabrio braces today on my 04’ r53 (70k miles) and had to unplug the cylinder shaped connector (body harness to engine harness?). After disconnecting the connector some oil started dripping out. Never seen this before - pls see pics. Is this normal? And if not, what might be causing this and how do I fix? Thanks!

 

Find the oil pressure sensor on the oil filter housing and remove the connector....if there is oil in that, replace the sending unit.....it's leaking and forcing oil through the connector and up the oil sender wire

Bryan

 

Clean the connectors with brake cleaner. It will dry quickly and leave no residue.

 

Cool thanks so to be clear it’s the sensor/sensor unit that would be leaking not the connector?

 

Correct, pull the connector off the oil sending unit, I bet you will find engine oil in the connector housing. If you do, get new sender and install. Get can of brakekleen and spray all the connector's that have oil inside. Put new sender and cleaned connector back together and recheck for leaks in a few weeks

Bryan

 

Thanks Bryan - do i need to drain the oil first or is it ok to just unplug the sender from the filter housing? Also do you happen to know if the sender is accessible w/out removing the housing and/or other stuff?

 

The sender is just screwed into the housing, no need to drain the oil. It's kind of a pain to get to back there, and you may need to get a "special oil sender socket" to get the old one off and the new one installed

First thing I would do is to pull the electrical connector off the oil sender and inspect the connector for oil contamination, look at the inside of the oil sender connection, and the wire connector itself before worrying about how to get the sender off. If you see oil in there, now you can start prepping for sender replacement

Bryan

 

Subscribing. Planning to buy an R53 that has this issue. Thanks for posting; are there any updates please?

 

I ended up cleaning it out and doing the “shotgun” approach of fixing all the common leak points and that did the trick. Google around for common leak points there are 5 or 6 of them.