I've been having an increasingly bad oil leak and this weekend I decided to hunt it down. Turns out that oil is bubbling out of the front cover gasket. I'm quite reluctant to go through the pain of pulling off the front cover and I'm wondering if this might be fixable with RTV. I had the though to clean up the spot with some carb cleaner and then get a hypo syringe with a tiny needle and fill it with RTV and then inject it into the gasket in several places where it's leaking. This is a ghetto type fix and I'm thinking it would fail, but I thought I'd see what people thought.

 

That's not going to work for very long at all, I don't think. Fix it right and don't worry about it again.

IIRC from what I've read, you will want to lift the engine and pull the oil pan off and reseal that as well when you replace the front cover gasket or it may develop yet another oil leak at that joint.

 

i've seen it tried, and it didn't work. it might slow the leak down though. you should also check the torque on the front cover bolts, if its loose or too tight it can cause problems.

 

The picture is small, and I'm not quite sure what we're looking at is actually the front cover seal. Do you have any other (better) pictures?

And it is possible to replace the front cover seal without removing the oil pan. I've done it without leaks. Once the front cover is off, you cut the oil pan gasket flush with the front iron. You make a paper gasket that fits the oil pan where it's exposed. Replace the front cover gasket, install the modified oil pan gasket with silicone sealant, pay special attention to the corners where the front iron meets the oil pan. Do not apply silicone to an oily surface; everything must be clean (I use brake cleaner and a lint-free cloth) before applying gasket sealant.

A couple extra pointers:
-Don't drop the thrust washer. See Mazdatrix's website for information about that.
-Don't forget about the o-ring that goes between the front cover and front iron. You'll have super low oil pressure if you neglect it!
-Most importantly, smearing silicone on the outside will definitely not work, and I HIGHLY doubt you'll be able to get RTV or silicone through a hypodermic needle.

 

Got some RTV in a syringe and put in where the bubbles were coming out. It slid right in so the gasket was definitely being eaten away. Gave it 24H and started her up and it seems to have held. However, there's another leak right above it that I can't see or get too. I'm going to pull off the water pump assembly and see if I can find that one and try to plug it too. Wish me luck.

 

A lazy man does twice (or in this case thrice) the work...

 

It's not sloth, it's science. Really....

 

if you're pulling the water pump you may as well do the job right and not have to worry about it again.

you may have other issues which are causing it, like excessive crankcase pressure from a kinked line for the crank ventilation system.

 

Yeah, I've gotten far enough in to realize that puling the front cover isn't all that much more work. Gonna go all the way in.

 

Like!

 

Finally got everything out of the way and I'm finding that the front cover is really stuck on there. I've pried it a bit and the top part seems to have broken loose but it's not really wanting to come off. As I rock it slightly, it appears to be stuck/locked on the oil pan. I've removed the front six oil pan gasket bolts so I don't think that's it. The FSM show that there's an oil pressure regulator bolt that needs to come out, but that's not removable without pulling off the oil pan and since others have said that this can be done with the engine still in the car and the oil pan on, I'm assuming that's not really necessary?

Any thoughts on this?

 

It is probably stuck on the two aligning bushings at about 4 and 10 o'clock two bolts that hold the cover on are located there ,, be careful you don't break the ears on the cover ,, Just worry the housing back and forth a tad and they should come loose it seems sometimes they are really tight . Gerald m.

 

In my experience, it's best to address the actual leak and replace the gasket versus trying to "patch" a leak. Also, a little bit of FIPG (form-in-place-gasket) on the joints/corners where parts meet is recommended.