Well, its been a little over a year (September 1999) since I posted a question on this board about a turbo oil leak. Not a huge leak but enough to get the underside of the car coated with oil and an occational drip on my garage floor. I recieved a number of useful suggestions from you fine folks and I'm hoping that during the past year some more discoveries may have been made on how to handle this problem. I've included some pictures that will tell the whole story at "http://www.sommerstv.com/volvo/leak.htm". They are rather detailed pictures so a DSL or Cable connection is recommended but dial-up is fine if you have the time.

Since September 1999 I've had the car in to the dealer on a number of occations for them to correct the leak. They have replaced . . .

Turbo oil return tube seal

By-pass diaphram on side of the turbo

Fresh Air hose and clamp (3 times)

After they replaced the fresh air hose for the third time in Mid-April of this year they applied some red paste to the intake side of the turbo. I'm assuming that they believed this would make for a better seal from the intake tube to the intake side of the turbo. I must admit that I didn't see any oil drip for about 7 months but it has recently reappeared. Apparently the red paste wore out. My fear is that the red paste simple covered up the real problem - not a long term fix.

Someone on this board suggested that a seal inside of the turbo is leaking and allowing the oil to go into the intake pipe. A good seal would not allow the oil to go into the fresh air intake in the first place. The mere presents of oil in the intake tube suggested that an internal turbo oil seal was the problem and that the turbo needed to be replaced. I don't know enough about the insides of the turbo to know whether that is a possibility. I would like to hear from others about this theory.

If oil in the intake pipe is normal then perhaps the seal from the fresh air pipe to the intake side of the turbo is still the problem. My only grip is that after three replacements I still have a problem. Is the clamp around the pipe normally a screw type hose clamp or should it be spring type clamp that continually places firm even pressure around the pipe? I'm wondering if the vibrations from the turbo are losening the hose clamp around the intake pipe?

Well, I'm going to bring this little note to a close but would appreciate any input from more knowledgable mechanics. My warranty runs out in about 4,000 miles and I sure would like to get this fixed once and for all.