oil leak on 2.3t head?

[my8950]

What is on the back of the cylinder head that would be leaking oil?
I notice now that I got my car to start and run, I see a bit of oil leaking somewhere at the back of the head and making a puddle.

[Ed Lijewski]

Bad valve cover gasket.

YMMV

[my8950]

Yes, that's a given. Ranger gasket on my shopping list.
I'm looking at the back to the head and there seem to be some fittings that go in there as well, over toward the drivers side of the car.

[Ed Lijewski]

Turbo oil feed line and oil pressure sender

YMMV

[sabre]

on my '89, it ended up being a head gasket

[my8950]

Hopeful its not head gasket.
I just got this thing running after a turbo swap pain.
When it runs, oil is leaking from something on back of head.
Possibly the turbo supply line as mentioned.

I guess I need to get it up in the air...

[John Brennan]

Clean off that area of the engine (or the whole thing while you're at it), and see where it leaks anew. The dipstick is there as well, and may be a factor with a bad PCV valve. I once had a mysterious oil leak in that vicinity which turned out to be a pinhole in the dipstick tube where it had separated from the bracket which holds it to the upper manifold.

[merkurdriver]

I've had a LOT of the oil pressure senders fail and pour oil from the rear of the head.

[motorhead_1]

mine did it on a head gasket as well

[my8950]

Is the sender available as a new part?
Or do we need to cobble something together in order to make this work without leaking?

[John Brennan]

New senders all day long at any of the major parts houses. Have you positively determined that it is the sender which is leaking?

[my8950]

I'm positive something is whizzing oil out on the ground...
And the valve cover leaks...
That's about it though.

All I can do from the keyboard today.

[merkurdriver]

New senders are an inexpensive, quite common part that fit many Fords.

[DPDISXR4Ti]

Have you positively determined that it is the sender which is leaking?

To re-affirm John's point, find out for sure what is leaking and fix that. The turbo oil lines often fail, so it could certainly be that. I've had a head crack at the oil junction block fitting, so it could be that.

Diagnose the problem and then fix it.

[Larry Velk]

Posted some years ago - our '88 had the "fire ring" missing on the factory fel-pro head gasket where the pressure feed is to the head (dr side rear corner). It held until some 65k, then let go as the oil pressure wore away the gasket material. This was a clear factory defect and may be present in a large production run. All the Fel-pro gaskets I've seen do have this copper fire ring in this area, our original did not. I've changed a few XR head gaskets and only the one had this failure, but I'd suspect at some point the assembly of these gaskets went haywire.