I was out in the garage today and since I never take my 2008 Redline for drives in bad weather, I decided to start her up for the first time in about 3 weeks to let the battery charge back up a bit (we've had a pretty cold and icy winter where I am, so I thought this would be a good thing to do).
After it had been running for about 10 minutes, I decided to look underneath the car. I did this on instinct because about 1 month ago, I had noticed oil underneath the engine area and after taking her into the dealership fearing the worst, I learned that I had apparently misplaced the inner oil filter gasket (not the one that comes with filters) which I guess caused some oil to escape. I'm not sure how I did that but that's what the tech said and I believe the guy because he's always been straight with me and solved the issues I've dealt with.
Anyway, fast-forward to today (about 1 month since the dealership visit) and I see a minor amount of oil leakage underneath after the car had been running for about 10 minutes. I'd say it may have been a puddle around the size of a quarter? I can't say whether the oil was there before starting her up but I know that the day after I made the dealership visit, I remember looking underneath the car to see if any leaks were apparent and I remember seeing none.
I got underneath the car to see if I could find anything obvious. I think saw oil seeping through the two connectors of the black hoses in the image below (seen from the driver's side):
I say this because those two hoses were the only places I could wipe off and then come back to a few minutes later to see a little glistening around the area where the black rubber hose connects / inserts into the metal clasp (the middle arrows).
As someone who knows very little about cars in general, what are these hoses?
I wiped everything down to clean everything off so that when I come back out in the morning, I might be able to see better where any oil might be coming from. If I see more oil tomorrow, I'm going to schedule another visit to the dealership to let them know what I'm seeing as soon as the weather gets good enough to drive in. I'm also a little concerned about mice possibly doing something as I've seen some scat in the engine area where I think they've hid out to keep warm. They've been known to chew through things here in the Midwest--little jerks. Ha!
Any insights into this would be appreciated.