I have a very annoying small leak on my 53 wrx.

I did believe it was a power steering fluid leak, as that's what the smoke smelt like and the location of where the smoke came from was over the correct side of the engine bay to be power steering fluid.

So I stripped off the downpipe, turbo and up pipe to reveal where the pipes bolt into the rack (the leak could not be seen from underneath or anywhere else)

I even had someone drive the car while in the air so we could see a drip form, which never happened ... prior to removal of downpipe turbo and up pipe obviously.

The only evidence of leakage I can find is on the bottom of the up pipe there was a collected pool of some sort of oil.... but I cant see how ps fluid would leak there?? ... valve cover gaskets above up pipe are new btw few hundred miles ago.

any advice would be great

 

It still could be the cam cover not sealed right, or one of the camshaft seals or even crank seal or oil pump itself. The oil tends to travel along the bottom timing belt cover and drips onto the front pipe heat shield hence the smoke but when your moving the rushing air blows it along the cam cover to the back end right above the up pipe and it drips onto that.

 

Thanks for that, I was kind of thinking something like that in my head. The rear crank seal has been replaced less than 300 miles ago and its definitely not that. Also both cam covers had new gaskets and silicone around the camshafts as per the subaru workshop manual so I'm confident its not them.

I have noticed there might be a tiny leak from the o ring behind the oil modine, do you think that may be blowing to the up pipe from there?

Also would I not notice a difference in smell if it was engine oil burning rather than ps fluid?