I've had oil on the oil pan of my 99 DOHC for a long time, and I finally decided to do something about it. I replaced the oil pan gasket about a month ago, which was a devastating nightmare to remove the exhaust nuts, as I live in the rust belt. I was able to get three of them off (using an induction flameless torch to heat them) but I cracked one stud, the hardest one to reach. Anyway, nightmare is over and I got the job done. But now I look under the car, and see oil there still!! And yes, I used a good gasket and put rtv where the timing cover meets the bottom of the engine, as per instructions. When I looked up a bit higher, I realized that it seems that the leak is not actually coming from the oil pan, even though it ends up there. It seems that it is coming from the next seal upwards, which is some kind of rtv gasket, which seems to basically be the bottom part of the block; I guess it would be called the crankcase. I saw it called the bulkhead in one diagram. Is it possible or likely that that is where the leak is coming from? If so, I guess repairing the leak would involve pulling and tearing down the engine, which I'm obviously not going to do.
The valve cover gaskets aren't leaking, and neither is anything else apparent. And I see the oil near that seal that I described, and lower, but nowhere higher. The car is old, true, but only has like 80,000 miles and is decently well maintained, so I wouldn't really have expected an oddball, atypical oil leak. At least the leak is pretty small...
The valve cover gaskets aren't leaking, and neither is anything else apparent. And I see the oil near that seal that I described, and lower, but nowhere higher. The car is old, true, but only has like 80,000 miles and is decently well maintained, so I wouldn't really have expected an oddball, atypical oil leak. At least the leak is pretty small...