Hi all, looking for a bit of advice… My car has been stood over winter and I’ve just noticed a small amount of oil on the garage floor under the front nearside. Looks to be an oil cooler hose weeping
The ‘hard’ connection and the cooler itself looks fine, it’s just wet where connector is crimped onto the hose.
I’ve whipped the undertray off and cleaned everything up, there was only a very small amount of oil. Will see what appears the next few days but if it’s leaking at rest I guess it’s only going to get worse under pressure. Can this join / connector be made good or is this a sign it’s time to replace the whole hose (really don’t fancy that job)?
The hose/crimp is over 20 years old. There are better solutions out there. I bet the hose around the oil filter/exhaust manifold is well past its best and either the same level of leaky or has gone really hard. There’s a better route for the engine bay to the oil cooler.
Fair point, the hose is probably original to the car, should really bite the bullet and change the lot.
Intrigued by the alternate routing? I believe everything goes down the driver’s side sill and over the wheelarch at the moment; I also have aircon pipes on my car which might complicate matters
@Fonzey it has all the bits but they don’t do much other than get in the way
Most mentions of the S1 setup seem to involve the phrase “con-air” or “asthmatic hamster”
We run the pipes down the sill as per factory, but rather than point the rubbery oil filled hose at the toasty exhaust manifold, we change the fittings on the filter head to -8 - from memory - and run them straight into the sill, over the wishbone brace bar. Then add some adaptors at the front to suit the oil cooler.
There are a couple of gotchas - as ever! Hopefully the fittings come off the cooler, as the cooler is NLA and we all know how steel and ally like to be screwed together. You need to swap out the fittings on the filter head - same. The pipes/fittings we use, are a bit odd, as they are a push fit fitting - it sounds scary, but have never had one come off - even trying to - and don’t be tempted to fit an additional mechanical fixing, as this can cut through the pipe. They are a complete bastard to get the pipe fully onto the fitting, we tend to heat the pipe in hot water to soften it slightly, lots of lube and lots of swearing! You can just about do it with AC, provided someone at Lotus didn’t decide to cable tie the oil pipes to the AC pipes - 50/50 so far!
Thanks @JDS, great info. I may end up giving you guys a call and have a trip over to East Yorks rather than try to DIY (I’ve got a few other jobs need doing as well). If you’re up for it that is, sounds like a nightmare!
