Re: 280 E Oil Leaks

Something is blocking (or overwhelming) the crankcase ventilation system and pressure is building up inside the engine. That makes everything leak oil.

If it were my car, I'd start at the air cleaner and work backwards to, and including the valve cover. Check that the passages are open, screens clear etc. and clean them if there's any doubt.

Inside the valve cover is an oil baffle; it may be clogged up. If so, there's a reason for that, either the engine is running too cold, or being driven only very short distances so it can't warm up or the oil changes are too infrequent or the oil is poor quality.

If nothing is found you must consider a blown head gasket; its symptoms are oil in the coolant, coolant in the oil, overheating, irregular idle. A compression test ought to be done to confirm low compression before removing the head.

The 110 is a solid engine and a sudden event like this has a specific cause, you need to find it.

Reply to
T.G. Lambach
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Just to back up TGs comments with my experience. Bearing in mind my car had less than 110k miles on it (and I've seen another one since [personally] with not much more), the baffle (in fact a wire gauze like a pan scrubber) in the rocker cover becomes blocked and the crank case pressure build up causes all sorts of problems (I had the oil blowing out of the dip stick). Cleaning this out is not fun. You need to remove the rocker cover and then grind off the rivet heads (2 off) holding the baffle plate into the top of the cover. A dremmell is good for this. You can then pull off this plate and stare in horror at the crud in there. The big lump is the filter gauze. It may clean up (soak it overnight in petrol), or uses a new stainless steel pan scrubber if it doesn't. To re-fit the cover, you can get the stumps of the rivets drilled and tapped (remember to use locktight on them when you finally screw it down). I just had a friend blob mig weld onto the steel rivet stumps (you can grind this off again in another 100k miles if you need to do the job again). Fit a new rocker cover gasket set and hopefully your sorted. If your lucky, you may be able to pick up another 110 rocker cover and do the job on that one, then you can just swap it in an hour.

Good luck......... Rob.

"T.G. Lambach" wrote:

Reply to
Rob. Smith

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