i have a 99 a4 2.8 with 76K. i have an oil leak on the passenger side of the car. if the leak was from the cam shaft seal would the oil hit the floor?? i was told that a leak there hits the catalytic and burns off. is this true? i have a few silver dollar size drops in my garage on the pass. side. the drops come off the lower control arm just behind the belly pan. Or is the problem my valve cover gaskets?? i ofcourse have the infamous " burning smell"
and smoke from that side of the car. i replaced my breather hose and just found out there is a rear breather hose. could the rear breather hose also be a source of my leak?? any comments would be greatly appreciated. thanks guys.

 

well it will only burn off if the car is running, when its sitting in the garage, it will drip down to the belly pan then out the back.. so its difficult to pinpoint the leak via drip pattern on floor woth the belly pan on

 

ok, thanks for the info. any other ideas???

 

totally agree, remove the belly pan and observe, chances are its the rear pipes on the cylinder head but you need to look

 

what do you mean rear pipes??? what is this??

 

oooopppps never done one of them lol, any oil bypass pipe/PCV/rocker gasket seal/end cam seals, anything that dosnt leak direct onto the exhaust

 

https://www.audiforums.com/m_464770/tm.htm

 

i just put new valve cover gaskets on and still smoking and leakin, but alot less. will it take a few days for the excess oil to burn off?? im thinkin i should have done the cam shaft seal while i was in there. im starting to think thats the source of my leak.

 

It could be allot of things. Hell I'm not even 100% sure mine is fixed but we'll see I guess. Oil doesen;t take mire than a few seconds to smoke and burn off so you should it looks like you're still leaking somewhere. Too bad because if you lived in Ottawa Ontario I'd recommend East Motors. That's where my baby goes.

 

my bet is on your crankcase vent