A journey into the the infamous Om642 oil cooler leak!

[Actros617]

Little info about this car
A 2008 E320 Bluetec with the 3.0L v6 Turbodiesel, OCI 10k miles using mobil 1 ESP 5w40 beginning ownership at 104k miles 2 years ago, now its at 127k miles with the most recent service fuel filter and oil and oil filter change at 126k miles...

It all started out with this an oil leak on the garage with at that time i didnt know its origin of leak and it appears to happened acutely at 127k miles, so i dropped the massive acoustic over under the car, now previsouly my undercarriage was spotless when i did my transmission fluid change at 110k miles and also did other several service that required the acoustic cover to be removed well not so much this time there was A TON of oil that has splattered everywhere in under carriage its almost like my W126 1984 300SD I had!! So i begin to trace it.




And all finger points to this hole! Here you can actually see it flowing out at an alarming rate as the car was running! My approximation is 1/8 of a cup per min. A little search later and i concluded OIL COOLER LEAK!


Sigh...i kinda knew that was going to happen one day. Now the oil cooler is located in between the middle V of the engine so what you see has that is stacked on top of if has to come out, that means air box, turbo, intercooler pipes, intake side of the intercooler pipes some fuel rails and its lines, fuel filter, swirl flap motor ect ect, WHERE DO I BEGIN I KEPT ASKING MY SELF, WHERE DO I BEGIN!!!!!



Day 1
Where do i begin!

Bought a few special sockets, well no so speical they're star scokets (ie 6 point socket) I reccomend that you do not buy harbor freight tool star sockets (Left) it will not sit properly on the bolt because of the shallow grove and will most likely strip, suggestion Lisle Star socket set (Right), they're sit perfectly flush on the bolt (see pick below), and do not use air tools, you'll run the risk of striping the damn bolt if you do so especially the exhaust bolts ill explain in a min!



Air box, coolant drained upper radiator hose, intercooler pipes, and the bat wing is removed, looking good so far!



The DREADED EGR, so this little thing sends some of your exhaust mobojumbo gases into your intake reburning, while its good for the environment they totally neglected the engines health, more to come i suppose,


The weird looking triangle and the larger round on the left is the intake manifold There has to be 1/4 inch of crud in there, no doubt how terrible must the entire intake manifold will look like, now the smaller round thing that is at the bottom of the picture is the Exhaust gas cooler that thing is in ever worst condition, that thing connects to the pipe shown in the above picture,


End of day one!