Leaking oil out my my Intake manifold

Ive noticed that my intake manifold is leaking what appears to be oil out of a small hole below the egr valve. What is causing this? looks like a screw hole, but no screw. Anyone experience a similar issue/

Yep, very common. You can tap it to 6mmx1.0 and then route the oil hose to a catch can, but if you plug it without a tune to delete the EGR it'll mess up how you car runs. I've had to fix a few for people who thought they could just plug it.

That is the EGR valve's vent port. The shaft is worn enough that crankcase breather oil which is normally passed through the charge air tract is being pushed past the EGR valve shaft and out the vent hole.

Unfortunately, on your car, the EGR valve is part of the intake manifold.

GM gave me the idea: on the Quad 4 engines they seemed to be unable to make the water pumps not weep through the vent hole, so they made a little "diaper" on a plastic ring that snaps around the pump.

So, I used some heavy gauze and a strip of self adhesive header tape on my old TDIs that eventually did this. Needed to change it every service, but at least it kept it from making a mess.

Here's another way: I tapped some threads into that hole and screwed in a small barbed nipple, then drilled a hole into the plastic hockey puck breather thing, and routed some vacuum hose to connect. Drill the hole in the plastic just smaller than the hose to achieve a tight fit.

What if I pulled the EGR off and cleaned it? would that make a difference?
Is there a rebuild kit where I can Replace the shaft?

These are not serviceable.
You may be able to find an intake in the classified, but they are all getting old.
The manifold from an AHU will fit, so you can broaden your search.
You'd need to do some re-working of the plumbing.

If it were me, I would pull the manifold, clean out the gunk, and cobble together a catch of some sort as has been advised.

Actually, based on the model year, yours is probably an AHU not a 1Z like mine.

I plumbed it into the valve cover.

Yeah, I have the AHU already
So pull it and clean the egr?
Car only has 135k on the clock, dont you guys think thats a little young for an egr cleaning?

remove intake, get pd130 or 150 right or left hand for your fitment, delete EGR and bypass hose for coolant lines. Done. you will have a CEL but a tune can fix that. Vent your CCV into a catch can and delete the port on the intake. one of the best things you can do for your car honestly. your head and intake is clogged up bad due to the EGR and is just for warming up the car on cold days but you can put a bandit sing in front of the radiator or use pipe insulation to flock up the front in winter. Or just fix it and move on if you dont care too much. the work to fix the egr valve on this manifold is hard but can be done, easier to replace manifold because its built in

luke.weiser said:

Yeah, I have the AHU already
So pull it and clean the egr?
Car only has 135k on the clock, dont you guys think thats a little young for an egr cleaning?

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No, cleaning it will probably make it leak worse.

Live with it or do one of the fixes mentioned above.

JB weld or quick steel, black electrical tape over CEL!!!!!

Mongler98 said:

JB weld or quick steel, black electrical tape over CEL!!!!!

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Not a good idea.

They will then have issues with the car running because the vacuum system pulls the diaphragm up and the blocked vent doesn't allow it to return, partially locking it open, returning too much exhaust to the intake smothering it.

I've seen it before and listed why you can't block it in the second post. You can block it if you also block the vacuum port to the Z18 AND block the EGR tubing to the exhaust. The N18 can be faked out electronically, but it takes some time.

I took an old egr valve apart. Just to see what it looked like inside. Once I removed the crimped “lid” I found a spring and a rubber diaphragm. The diaphragm was glued to the bottom of the egr lid,, forming a tight seal. In my case the diaphragm had a very small hole in the rubber and would not hold vacuum causing a cel.

You can see how it all fits together.

Mine had a small tear in the rubber diaphragm which I made much larger by the time I got it apart. You can see the weep hole just below the rim in line with the central shaft. One weep hole on each side.

After disassembly I see no way of a rebuild, which was part of the reason for dissection. The egr valve appears to be a single use “throw away when it goes bad item”.

I didn’t disassemble the egr any further but I would guess there is an O ring or two around that central shaft and a leaking egr valve is caused by failure of those O ring(s).

There appears to be no way to rebuild this valve, so it needs to be replaced if you want to stop the oil weep, which is annoying , or if it fails to hold vacuum which affects the function of the car.

There are no o-rings on the shaft, just a metal on metal bushing. EGR valves are mostly made the same way, these are not anything special in that regard.

The only thing that stinks is on the OP's older style TDI engine is that the EGR valve is part of the manifold, unlike the later cars where it is a separate part (and has the anti-shudder valve integral with it).

I actually like the vent idea, that is pretty clever. By now they pretty much all have worn to the point they are weeping some.

oilhammer said:

There are no o-rings on the shaft, just a metal on metal bushing. EGR valves are mostly made the same way, these are not anything special in that regard.

The only thing that stinks is on the OP's older style TDI engine is that the EGR valve is part of the manifold, unlike the later cars where it is a separate part (and has the anti-shudder valve integral with it).

I actually like the vent idea, that is pretty clever. By now they pretty much all have worn to the point they are weeping some.

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Missed the MK3 part. So metal on metal, I guess they can't help but wear, I just figured there had to be an O ring on that shaft some where.

Abacus said:

Not a good idea.
They will then have issues with the car running because the vacuum system pulls the diaphragm up and the blocked vent doesn't allow it to return, partially locking it open, returning too much exhaust to the intake smothering it.
I've seen it before and listed why you can't block it in the second post. You can block it if you also block the vacuum port to the Z18 AND block the EGR tubing to the exhaust. The N18 can be faked out electronically, but it takes some time.

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it was a joke, see my post above same day #5350957

Sorry, I did miss that, my bad.

Been needing to do something about this for a long time. Bought a drip pan for my driveway as a temp fix.