For a little while now I’ve heard a knocking noise coming from what I though to be the front-nearside wheel arch and on Friday I decided to have a look to see if I could figure out the cause once and for all. Upon taking the wheel off, I immediately noticed that a screw was missing which should’ve held two pieces of the wheel arch lining in place. I looked closer and realised that the screw had not infact fallen out but the screw head had snapped clean off – I decided to use a trusty cable tie to secure it for the time being (I clipped the cable tie afterwards, rest assured!). Whilst checking for other potential causes of the knock, I noticed the undertray of my engine bay looked to have oil on it; this led me to discover another issue…

I proceeded to remove the undertray to determine how big of an issue this could be. I first checked the underside of the oil sump which, although it had some oil on, didn’t look to be the cause. I then continued looking around the sump and found an excessive amount of oil around the hose clamp on the radiator intake hose – the hoses themselves also didn’t look to be fully inserted into one another – I removed the hose clamp using a flat-head screwdriver and gentley separated the two ends so I could get a better look at what’s going on. The inside of the hose itself looked to have a small amount of oil at the base which I believe was from previously having slightly too much oil in the engine which caused oil to get into the intake system.

I cleaned this all up and secured the clamp back on the hose which now looked much more secure. After this I took a second look at the sump just to check I didn’t miss any potential causes of the leak which is when I discovered burnt oil around the sump bolts. This looked to be very old oil so I was unsure as to whether this was a recent issue or something from before the I purchased the car. From the small red strip of gasket sealant shown below, I suspect the engine had to have the sump removed at some point which, if they didn’t it up at the time, could be the burnt oil I saw around the sump bolts.

I cleaned everything up and removed all the oil I could see and plan on checking this in the next day or two to see if the oil has reappeared. Once clean, I secured the undertray back on the car and replaced some of the rusted screws with some new screws I keep in my car for when the need arises. I then mounted the wheel back on the car and torqued the wheel nuts up to spec once removed from the axle stands.