ManiN

Update from my side. Seems the leak is still there just not near as bad. Still smell the burning oil. Not very much drip on the garage floor like before. I believe the shaft output seal is no good and may need replaced as there is clearly fluid leakage coming from there. There used to be at the vent but I took care of that. Is it possible that filling to the thread on the side plug is too much and it will cause leakage through the seal? Or is that not likely cause it's a lip seal and maybe just worn out. Car has 100k on it.

This is now common too? Wouldn't have thought it was as bad being in the rear away from a heat source. From my digging and personal experience with my PTU, the fluid becoming grease like I believe is from a vastly over heated PTU. I've seen others mention this theory in their posts, and I agree. At work we had Mobil Oil come in to discuss their fluids. We spent time discussing how lubricant can be damaged and improperly applied in applications. One point I remember was overheating and how it can damage the lubricant changing it on a molecular level. One failure of lubricant is thickening (not change in viscosity). This is exactly what we see here is the lube getting overheated and becoming grease-like. Unfortunately when it's degraded like this, the lubricant properties are drastically reduced and you will have early wear on components. That said I believe the real root of the problem with these PTUs is running the cat & exhaust basically wrapping around it. Cooking the oil like a vat of hot tar... Some folks have added more home made heat shields to protect the PTU. I think this is a good attempt, I'd imagine it would at least buy some time between changes. These same points above are the reason to buy more expensive higher heat rated lube if you can. I personally chose Royal Purple. I think between higher quality lubricant and routine changes, this is the only way to help it along unless you reroute the exhaust (not happening).

Yes, I noticed this and wondered why no one replied to the thread. My guess is that it didn't even bump the thread to the list until I posted my follow up.

So far so good with my fix. Had a drip the next day but nothing after that. I'm suspicious that filling to the side fill plug is slightly over full as mentioned by others. There are no drips now and no heavy smells. There is still a slight odor in the garage ,but I also wasn't able to fully clean the PTU top side and even just this can cause odor.

Hi All, thought I'd post my applied fixes to this same problem. Have a 2013 Edge with classic leaky PTU leaving splats of black oil on the garage floor with also the burning of the same oil splats on the exhaust crossing under the output shaft from the PTU. I've read through many forums related to this issue in various forms and finally built up the courage to apply some of the methods to get past this issue. One important one being to add a drain for oil changes, but I also wanted to deal with the belching breather. In another forum I noticed on the focus, ford actually provides a kit to extend the breather into the engine bay by way of removing the old jiggly cap breather and putting this kit on that has a barbed insert, hose, and breather cap. Specifically the kit is AG1Z-7034-A. (forum I found this info: https://www.ecoboostperformanceforum.com/index.php?topic=6849.0) I couldn't find any documented application of this kit to an Edge, but I did find someone with an Explorer put this on. Before purchasing, I thought I'd get under and feel it out to see if it were even possible. Glad I did because it isn't really possible to do that kit on the Edge without removal of the PTU. There just isn't enough room to remove the breather and tap in the barbed nipple for the extension hose. However, there's still a solution if you're motivated... The jiggle cap breather is already installed, so I took a risk and knew that if I could remove the cap (blindly by reaching up through and over and just feeling it out), I could pull out the rubber check valve within and thus converting the vent into a nipple to put a hose on. I was ultimately successful by using a socket and shorty 3/8 ratchet. I slipped the socket over the jiggle cap and pulled to the side and rotating the ratchet. This essentially flared the jiggle cap open and after a bit of fighting I got the cap off. Next I fought the rubber check valve a bit, but in hindsight, just use a pick and it should just pull out easy. At this point you'll have a "nipple" to put some 3/8 hose on. The breather body dia. is somewhere just under 1/2". I was able to slip the hose over with a clamp to secure it. At that point you can secure the top of the hose to the wiring next to the master cylinder up top. You'll need to find a breather online to put in the end of the hose. Something like a Toyota 90930-03136 or Dorman 924-284 Axle Vent. I just found this online, but as long as it is designed to breathe / vent outward, you should be ok. Even just a filtered vent would be fine. Just make sure it fits your hose. Of course you could buy the $75 kit for the focus mentioned above, but I cannot verify if that hose will fit the modified jiggle cap breather converted to nipple. After this vent tube was installed, I drilled the drain and tapped a 1/8-27 NPT plug. I was able to drain the fluid and simply grab my royal purple bottle and just squirt it into the vent tube. Soooo easy.... Once it was dripping from the plug in the side (original fill location), I stopped adding fluid and buttoned everything up. All in all I'm glad i have a full solution to this problem now. I'll update with results, but having ready all of the success in both of these mods, I am sure I'll be able to share the same results. End comments: It may seem a little ghetto to mod the jiggle breather like that, but I assure you, unless you want to drop your PTU to do this, it's impossible to pull and replace that breather with something where it is located otherwise. And unfortunately, I didn't take pics, but there is enough documentation related, you can navigate your way through this without them.