After replacement gasket #3, he finally discovers the real cause

[Roa, Greg]

I am putting myself in dunce corner of the audifans list.  Seems that I
can do such things as a clutch job on a quattro, and complete suspension
rebuilds with little problem, but changing a timing belt kicked my butt.
You may remember a few posts that I made, trying to figure out why my
oil pan kept leaking.  I had changed my timing belt, pulley, water pump
and seals, thinking that my main seal was leaking.  Realized that the
main seal was fine, so settled on the fact that it was the oil pan
gasket.  Changed that, still leaked.  Bought a new oil pan, changed
gasket, still leaked.  Pulled pan, changed gasket, torqued bolts
exactly, still leaked.  Figured that it was the gasket sealant that I
was using, so pulled the pan, cleaned the surfaces perfectly, put it
together, still leaked.
I checked brackets everywhere at several points along this timeline,
couldn't find anything.

Finally was able to notice a small stream of oil running out from behind
the timing belt rear cover, on down the block, around the lip of the oil
pan, and dripping on the floor.

Having been using synthetic, the oil was too clear to see running down
the block before.

Turns out, when I did the timing belt swap, I didn't tighten the bolts
on the rear cover quite tightly enough.  I didn't want to crank them
down, as I was afraid of stripping the aluminum.  Turns out that two of
the bolts run into oil passages on the oil pump.  Oil was blowing past
the threads, and all over my engine.

Boy do I feel like an idiot.  I wasted hours and hours, 3 quarts of oil,
$150, and a bunch of my hair, over two bolts that weren't completely
torqued.

At least now the leak is fixed, so I can move on to more pressing
issues, like the broken passenger's side front doorhandle, replacing the
center muffler, and installing my new euros.   Sigh.

Greg Roa
Cincinnati, OH
86' 4kcsq
93' 90 CS
83' 944