twarner85

Good morning, I am a total forum newb, so if this is in the wrong place, please let me know. I have what appears to be an oil leak around the area of the HPFP. I notice oil stains on the passenger side, near the catalytic converter (I believe)/ exhaust. Many searches, lead me to believe the leak may be coming from the vacuum valve. Something I have not seen anything about in my searches is oil on top of the HPFP and in that area. Could this be the same leak, and oil is just somehow making its way to this area? Notice the grime and what appears to be oil around the plug, and below. I did wipe some oil from this area before taking a picture, but oil was actually covering the plug enough that it covered the part number/barcode on the plug.

Httq5

What year/engine is your Q5?

twarner85

My apologies, its a 2015 Premium Plus 2.0

SMac770

HPFP mounts into the vacuum pump. The vacuum pump mounts to the back of the cylinder head, on the exhaust cam side. The back end of the exhaust cam turns the vacuum pump while also pumping the HPFP.

You might have a leaking vacuum pump seal. You might have a leaking HPFP o-ring. Or that could be "spray" coming from elsewhere, such as a leaking gasket on the PCV (object with the white cap) or cylinder head cover seal. You might want to clean it up and try to assess an origin of the leak. The air flow in the engine bay at highway speeds can carry oil a good ways.

But there's not enough info there to say "it's this". All you can do is continue assessing the situation, or just start replacing the likely failed sealing components. Both the vacuum pump gasket (metal) and HPFP o-ring are not unheard of failing.

silver_tt

There are only so many places this engine leaks oil. If you are seeing oil on the passenger side / catalytic converter up high that would be the vacuum pump or its gasket. However looking at your picture that almost looks like you have fuel leaking -- are you sure it's oil? As suggested you should clean the head very well using something like Gunk and it will make it much easier to see where the leak is originating from. Worst case if you can't tell if it's oil or fuel, you can also add a dye to the oil and see with a UV light. I replaced the HPFP in my 2014 at around 100K miles last year even though there was nothing wrong with it because it can fail in several ways and do nasty things like fuel dilute your oil.

edit: i just re-read your initial post and it sounds like you already had wiped a lot of the oil off before you took the picture. I am guessing it's related to the vacuum pump but if your PCV is over 50K miles old that's due to be replaced too.

twarner85

Thank you, I will clean it up and see. I actually just replaced the PCV valve, I don't believe it was leaking oil, although to be honest, I didn't really investigate it much.

twarner85

I don't smell any fuel, and I guess i wouldn't even know what a fuel leak would look like. I changed the PCV a few days ago, I can't rule out that it wasn't leaking from the old one. Die in the oil seems like a good idea. In your opinion, how difficult was changing the old HPFP? Ive seen videos, and it seems easy enough; at the same time videos of replacing CV axle seemed easy as well, but it was much worse than I anticipated, Oddly enough, clips, plugs and hose removal scares me the most.

silver_tt

If it was fuel you would smell it so I think you can reasonably rule that out. I would clean it all up which only takes 5 minutes and then assess if it is still leaking and, if so, where. Seems like vacuum pump but you will know for sure once it's cleaned up and you keep an eye on it.