oil leak?
 

I have a small oil leak that I noticed after I drove the car home from buying it. It is smoking a bit because the oil is being burned off of the hot engine parts.

The leak seems to be in the general area under the intake on the side by the oil filter. It seems higher up than the filter, and more toward the center of the engine.

What do you guys think? Is it serious? It isn't leaking much, and it doesn't drip on the ground. I can see oil on the hoses back in that area too, so I need to get it cleaned off. What would your first guesses be?

Thanks,
Patrick

Had the same issue a few months ago, lots of oil smoke/burning. Took it to PFS. At first glance they said it might be coming from the turbos, which could be costly. Later on, it was only a leak from the oil filter area and they replaced, I think it was called a oil filter seal or something. Not expensive. No more oil burning.

I just had a leak fixed last month in the intake manifold. It was doing the same thing. When I got the car home, it was smoking from all the leaked oil burning off.

I hope it is one of those problems.

I looked under the car, and there is oil down the side, and a bit on the bottom too. However, I think it has just run down over time....I hope.

It has plenty of oil in it, and doesn't seem to be loosing much...

I will find out I guess.

Pat

Yea, that sounds like what I had going on. I had a huge oil leak that was the lines into the turbos. It was dumping a lot of oil on the ground after running the car.

I took it in to get that fixed, and somehow Mazda managed to get the intake manifold gaskets to fail. This time there wasn't much oil dropping to the ground, but it was running down the engine and cooking.

It cost me about $600 for the parts and labor for the intake manifold fix at a Mazda dealership.

Ok, I checked it out more.

It seems bigger than I thought. The passenger side of the engine has a bunch of oil on it, and it looks like some on the bottom too. It dripped two small drops on my driveway after cruising around.

I will have to get under there and clean it all up so that I can see where the leak is coming from.

What are the chances that all the oil came from the filter seal going bad?

Patrick...

After you get under the car you will have a better idea. I had a leak and it turned out to be rear main seal, rear stationay gear seal, the two oil rings in the filter housing and some also from the oil sensor in the pan. If it is either the rear main seal or stationary seal you will have oil all around the motor but might only see a couple of drops. If you have a 3rd gen you better start learning how to fix the car. I had never worked on it before and I have removed the turbos several times, the upper and lower intake manifold the tranny and my motor just blew so I am putting a new on this week. Your car might be down longer but you can use all the saved money on parts.

The car is a weekend car, so I plan on it being down.

I will definately learn how to fix it, I am just trying to find a place to start. This site and its members are a great asset to learn about the cars.

I also have vacuum leak somewhere I think. The second turbo isn't making full boost, and I have a bit of an erratic idle.

Also, some previous owner put a muffler on the car with only one outlet. It has a fake pipe welded to the muffler to make it look like a dual outlet muffler. This could cause the low boost on the the second turbo.

Later,
Patrick