Can anyone help me identify the port or bolt hole in the attached photo? 03 Disco 2 with 4.6 V8. Oil is pumping out of it when running. It is located on the front passenger side of the block just behind the oil pressure switch. Just replaced sump gasket, rocker arm cover gaskets, all front cover gaskets, and front main seal. Filled crankcase and started engine, much to my dismay saw oil dumping all over the floor coming from this port. Looked in the workshop manual and Google - see many pictures of it but no identification. I don't remember unplugging it and I don't have any extra screws or bolts. Will just plug it but would like to know what it is and if it's important or a sign of a larger failure.

 

I was going through pictures of my recent HG job and the image you have on the right with the red circle isn't connected to anything on mine. It was just filled with gunk. I can't tell from the first pic though. Are you sure its not coming from somewhere else?

 

It's definitely coming from there, I watched it pump out. I checked with the fine folks over at British Atlantic. One of their techs said that its a threaded hole for the alternator bracket, and that someone may have used too long of a bolt and pierced the oil channel that runs behind it. Made sense to me, although my alternator bracket doesn't extend down that far, but maybe another model that uses the same block has a different alternator bracket. A bolt piercing the oil channel seems logical. While I don't specifically remember taking a bolt out of there, the front of my engine was coated in thick black grime and there are a lot of bolts on that front cover and water pump, so I very well may have removed something that was simply holding back the flow. A previous owner had done a lot of shoddy work on it - including a bypass of the knock sensors, bolting them to the alternator - so this sort of thing wouldn't be a surprise.

I inserted an M8 x 1.25 x 20 mm flange bolt in there with a copper gasket and a touch of RTV Ultrablack, so we'll see how that holds up.

 

I know that threaded tab is used on 4.0 liter, 4.2, 3.9 blocks to hold the bracket that is attached to the metal heater coolant pipe. It's not a port and in NO way should oil becoming out of that hole unless, as you mentioned, too long of a bolt was used.

 

It's part of the alternator bracket on my 2000 4.0 Thor engine

 

JB weld that mother.