About 700 miles into this engine build my engine went and spewed its life blood all over the highway. For the past couple hundred miles she had a consistent oil drip while the engine was warm and running. The place from the engine that I could see it dripping off from was the passenger side motor mount of my ‘01 VVT engine. When cold the engine would hold 80psi of oil pressure but would drop to about 15 or less at idle and that oil drip would accompany it.
The last drive that drip went to a spray as it lightly sprinkled onto my windshield through my hood louvers. I thought it was starting to sprinkle outside but when I ran the wipers the oil smeared all over my windshield that that’s when I realized I was in trouble. The next thing that followed was the burning oil smell on the exhaust then the oil pressure dropped to zero and I instantly shut off the engine. The engine engine bay was pooled with oil. Any surface that could hold oil had oil pooled up on it.
I have been trying to run over in my head what could go from a drip to a spray and lastly to a jet of oil. Any ideas on what is came from? I checked the VVT lines, oil pressure sender and the filter and all of them appear to be snug.

 

Fill it up with oil and start it. Should be fairly obvious at that point.

 

Try the gasket between the oil cooler / heater and the block under the oil filter. I've seen one of those fail with similar results

 

Nice idea but I have removed that sandwich plate in lieu of the connector that just runs an oil filter.

 

Ok then , what he said . Clean it up , fill it up , start it and watch what happens. Should be fairly obvious i. Good luck.

 

go with the uv light and some fluorescing additive in your oil. Works like magic. I found my VVT banjo bolt was the culprit.

 

If it's spraying all over the engine bay I don't think the UV light and additive will be necessary.

 

Seconded

 

Check the oil pump high pressure port hex screw. If you're running a boundary pump those have been known to leak because no sealant was used. Maybe it backed out.

 

Great, yet another failure mode of this shitty part.

 

VVT feed hardline or oil pressure sender. Both on passenger side right above the motor mount. Also, if you have new motor why are you driving around knowing it has an oil leak?

 

#miatapartslife

 

'member when you were using a grinder in Fontana trying to make brake pads fit the wrong calipers because of some weird failure?

Or the next year when I couldn't get my cooling fan circuit to stop burning my harness?

 

Yup, i sure do 'member. All this stupid **** is really lessening my enjoyment of cars in general.

Luckily most of what really scares me and pisses me off is focused around the BP as a motor, so that directly cemented my decision to not carry on with the BP.

But i've had my fair share of absolutely awful miata-but-not-BP-related fuckery in recent years, too. I'm just sick of reading a new "this part for our cars sucks because *insert asinine thing here*" every week.

 

It would be possibly a good idea to gather all of them together in a single thread; mostly as a checklist for people installing them but also (hopefully) for Boundary to fix them in a future revision.

 

I pulled the hex off my old OEM pump and added sealant and its been leak free since. The hex plug boundary used fit much looser almost like it wasnt a tapered thread like the OEM is.

 

So what would these include?

1) use oem FMS.
2) seal hex threaded bolt
3) fit oem o ring
4)...?

 

5) K swap

 

Goddammit ben...


Yeah, but it'll look hella purdy!