drippy oil leak

[poorly_felicia]

felicity seems to get a bit of a turbo charge when i gave her some nice fresh 10w40 semi synthetic to drink. But im a bit fussy about my oil changes and i do them about every 5 months (4ish thousand miles). its quite satisfying to see the oil coming out the same colour as what goes in!

only problem is she now has a drippy oil leak. Which brings me on the the question,

on the 1.3 mpi engine about 6 inches to the left and 3 inches up of the oil filter (as you look at it) there is a random bolt going into the engine block. This is where she is dripping from. This bolt appears to serve no purpose on my car. Ive unscrewed it and cleaned up, also given it a nice new squishy copper washer BUT IT STILL BLOODY DRIPS. If you think its safe to, shall i just undo it a bit and cover it with instant-weld? jobs a goodun then i think!

[anewman]

Is it one of those biggish bolts? I think it's an oil way. Only implication I can think of sealing it up is you will not be able to make use of the oilway for overhauling the engine etc, but you probably won't need to anyway.

Is the copper washer the official size and type from a dealer?

[poorly_felicia]

im not certain its an oil way bolt. the bolt is a 17 mm head and once unscrewed its about 1.5cm in length, with a surprisingly narrow thread.

this thing is doing my head in!!!!

[KenONeill]

I've never seen a bolt used to block off an oil (or water) gallery. I'd expect a normal core plug to be used. Obligatory Wikipedia link Core plug - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[shytot]

The large head / small thread combo sounds like sender unit for a guage or something. As yours is just a plain bolt (without wires or connectors) I'd guess it's just a plug to fill the hole where a sender unit would go in a different or earlier application of the engine block.
Try a bit of PTFE tape on the threads before doing anything drastic.

Simon H