Skeltah

In the past month, I have notice that my car has developed a oil leak around the rear of the passenger side of the engine. I haven't given it much thought as the car is not consuming/losing, more than 1Qt of oil every 2K mi or so. I also thought that it was a typical oil pan leak and that If I kept a close eye on it then there wouldnt be a problem. That was until I had the car up on a lift over the weekend and was able to closely inspect the problem area. The seal around the oil pan is completely dry so I ruled that out as the possible culprit. It seems as though the leak is coming from somewhere around that side of the engine. The oil lines from the block to the turbos are fine as well. Please help me out with any other options.

Thanks,

Matthew Walsh

mgoddard1

Main rear oil seal? Remove the access plate on the transmission and look for black goo inside the bell housing.

FDjunkie

Another possibility is the rear stationary gear o-ring. Since you have to take it apart to replace the rear main you should probably do both.

RedRx00

im still curious though matt is to how there was oil on the bottom of the pan, but then all around the sides of it were dry. that still doesnt make any sense to me. it was already pointed out but i was thinking what it could be and the rear main seal could be a possiblity, all you gotta do is take off the two 10mm bolts off to remove the access plate and take a peak, prolly would of been a good idea to do it while it was up on the lift yesterday.

DamonB

I've been chasing a bad oil leak for sometime. I located and fixed a couple small ones but the real culprit turned out to be from the front cover. On mine the oil comes out the front cover on the passenger side, runs around the top lip of the oil pan, under the exhaust manifold (where the oil gets really hot and smokes as it cooks off) then continues down the side until it blows off and under the car or drips around the right side of the subframe and passenger motor mount. Some of the oil will also find its way straight down and merely wash across the underside of the pan. My front cover oil leak looks exactly like your pic.

Remove the airpump and stare long and hard at the seam between the engine and front cover just above the OMP.

Skeltah

And the only fix would be to completely pull the engine and replace the seal.. no? How detrimental to the engine is driving the car at this point? I rarely drive it as it is..

mr.zoom

iTrader: (1)

it was the front cover for me...


don't have to pull the engine but you do have to lower the subframe to make things easier. Just take your time and pay attention to detail and you should be fine.

search somewhere re: front cover

Skeltah

Any problem driving the car in this state as long as I check the oil?

mgoddard1

I guess I didn't read his problem description closely enough. If there's oil on the bottom of the pan but the sides are dry then it could be a bad o ring around the oil level sending unit on the side of the pan or maybe a missing crush washer on the oil plug? Oil leaks can be difficult to track down since the source of the leak can be far away from where the drip is.