Oil leak help

[1braincell]

Hi,

I noticed today that there was a small puddle of oil under under my '03 996TT, 42K miles (which I've had for one month now) near the back center of the engine. The car hasn't been used for the last 9 days while I was away and prior to this didn't see anything unusual. Based on the location and the pictures could anyone suggest any places I should look at in particular. From my reading RMS leaks for the 996TT are quite rare.

In addition, the oil pressure gauge has been acting up over the past month and I'm not sure if the two may be related. At first the oil pressure gauge was jumping erratically while driving (shooting up and down from 3 to 4.5 bar while driving at a steady speed). Lately though, the oil pressure at idle has creeped up to 2-2.5 bar and 5 bar at 3K+ rpm. The oil level is fine and the pressure has never gone down to zero so, based on a few experiences others have had, I'm considering the most likely candidate to be a faulty oil pressure sender.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Loren]

Oil will run toi the lowest point and get blown on other parts by road speed. It is best clean the oil off then run the engine until good and warm. Then you should be able to the leak source.

The oil pressure sender is a common leak source.

[1braincell]

An update ...

I cleaned the area where the oil was evident and left the car overnight. The next day I could see a small trail of new oil but not enough to drip onto the cardboard placed under the engine. I dabbed the wet area with a clean tissue and noticed that the color of the fluid was clear yellow. Since the last motor oil change was performed about 7 months ago I would have expected any oil leak to be a fair bit darker in color. The leaked fluid is also a bit thinner that 0w40 weight oil as well. Following the instructions in the handbook I checked the power steering level and found that it was quite a bit higher than max cold line (car sitting overnight, started for 20 seconds and then turned off). I had to remove about 120 ml of pentosin from the reservoir to get the level down into the hatched area. The car is a tiptronic so, as far as I know, the reservoir in the engine bay only serves the power steering pump (no noises from the PS pump or problems otherwise). I'm wondering if the overfill somehow allowed the extra fluid to leak down under the center-front of the engine? Has anyone had any similar experiences they could share?