Most recent work under the B5 showed a lot of oil around and under the turbo. Cleaned it off a couple of times, left the bottom cover off for a bit of driving, then parked it the garage. After being away for four days, there was a decent amount of drippage on the floor that seems to be coming from the wastegate or the line under it. Here is a photo looking up from below to the line in question and the slightly moist wastegate above it:



The line has a pretty good curve in it right after what you see in the photo, and is attached to a similar sized line with a plastic clip that fits over both of the lines, but is not attached to anything else. What is this line, do you think the compression fitting is leaking, any other bright ideas?

Not using a ton of oil, but if I can fix something easily, I like to.

 

That has to either be the oil pick up or oil return line for the turbo.

 

It's actually a coolant line, forget which one but it's the one that connects to the block.

 

Coolant line leaking oil?

 

It's not coming from the line, since like you said a coolant line can't possibly leak oil. Most likely it's coming from the oil feed line and dripping down. It can't be coming from the wastegate either, so look around for what could be dripping on to those parts.

 

or the seals in the turbo its self, major signs the turbos seals are bad, that's happening bc you don't properly heat up and cool down the car at start up and shut off.... if you don't wait for the car to get to operating temp before driving all the oil seals are cold, and get rushed with really hot oil when u take off.. and more importantly you need to make sure the car idles and cools down after raging, or driving in traffic. don't pull in the drive way and shut the car off immediately, the oil is flowing threw the turbo cooling the turbine, if u come home from work in traffic and shut the car off instantly the oil boils inside the turbo and ruins the seals, btw your service interval for the b5 1.8t is to replace turbo every 100k... that's audis recommendations

 

The hose pictured is the coolant feed line for the turbo. The oil is not coming from that hose, but is dripping on it. The only sources for oil that high would be the turbo oil feed line or the valve cover gasket.

I would place my money on the VC gasket, inspect it for leakage at the edge. It could be dripping down on top of that coolant feed line.

 

Thanks for all the input, folks. I'll try and clean again and see if I can isolate it to one of the mentioned spots.

Did not know about that 100k turbo change. Looks like something else to do on the next (and final) timing belt change in about 10k miles.