I have an 04 8 that as been having an oil leak for sometime now, I go through about 1 qt. per fill up. It has about 80k miles on it. I have done a little bit of troubleshooting myself and I THINK I might have narrowed it down to the following piece of failure. Can someone tell me what it is, and maybe even the likely hood of it being the problem, Thanks.


EDIT: I rinsed off around this piece so some of what you see is just water

 

That's the oil metering pump.

Sends a small amount of engine oil up to the top of the rotor housings, thru plastic pipes, to lube the inside.

Problem is that it doesn't send that much oil, even if all the plastic was broken......could be the gasket between the pump and the block, but that's a long shot.

From your pics it looks like there is oil dripping down onto it, indicating a higher leak?

I'd keep looking.

 

well a fair amount of oil is under that part and the oil that makes it to the ground is dripping from the passenger rear side, and some of the oil under the hood is from the belt slinging it upward.

 

From the pictures, it looks pretty dirty there. Take it to a self serve car wash and clean down in that area. Once it is cleaned up, you may be able to pinpoint better where the leak is coming from now that you know there is one.

 

That was my next bet, I was hoping there is a common leak atleast in that general area that someone might be able to tell me about to save a little time

 

ive read that the lines to the oil coolers rust and leak sometimes but thats no where near your pics.

 

I am 100% certain that the leak is somewhere on the passenger side of the engine the rest Im unsure, I know that it CAN be low on the engine because my belt is throwing oil on the top side of the engine

 

Well I have cleaned off my engine and now running for a little bit to hopefully find the leak from idling, dont want to have to drive and give it a chance to sling oil all over the place

 

Well I talked to the dealer and I found out mazda doesnt recommend running synthetic in the rx8, so I changed the oil put in some regular and will see how it goes. Thanks to everyones input

 

The synthetic oil is not making it leak. It is likely the MOP o-ring that I think is about $10

Don't let them try and sell you a new pump