My 03 a4 quattro has been leaking oil for a year or so and it's driving me crazy. The leak is on the passenger side and way up front. While running with hood open, It drips off the lower radiator support and appears to be coming from the radiator. I have the lower valance off and can see in there well. Today I saw one drip at a time forming under the passenger corner of the radiator between the ac condenser. What is up there that contains engine oil? If it helps, I noticed oil on the ac condenser near the top and it was weaping into the middle of the condenser. The connection between the condenser plastic and aluminum was heavily saturated. Why would oil come out of the condenser or the radiator? Thanks for helping.

 

Are you sure it is oil that is leaking and not coolant? I can't think of anything in the condenser area would have oil in it. Not sure what engine you have but I've got the 3.0 engine - maybe the turbo 4 cyclinder engine has some equipment in that area that I'm not familiar with.

I had a radiator leak earlier this summer that I initially thought was a power steering fluid leak because the leaking fluid didn't have the look or smell of coolant and it was leaking near the little power steering cooling loop in front of the condenser. It wasn't until the small leak grew into a larger leak and started spraying out of the radiator that it became apparent that it was coolant.

 

I have thought about this too. It would make more sense. It resembles oil more than coolant. It is the 1.8t model. I did just replace the rear water outlet and then the water pump a couple weeks later. While in there, I noticed the condesner was made in Taiwan and several bolts were mismatched, someone had worked on it before me. I say this because it did have a known water leak so monitoring fluid level was tough. It does not seem to be leaking coolant from the engine anymore so hopefully I can test your theory.

What makes me skeptical is the fluid is dark and oily. My car runs low on oil (maybe it burns it, my Mini Cooper does this bad!) but never leaks oil, except for this area. There are a few oily deposits on the motor but how would this get up to the front side of the radiator and condenser? And then drip steady while running with hood open? As I said above, there was a fair amount of oil on the radiator and condenser on the opposite side to of engine. Thanks!