Oil leaking from somewhere down by the belts? It might be your fill cap gasket.

[cn90]

- I got rid of the cosmetic cover and saved it in my garage.

- This way, the ignition coils can cool better, and any oil leak from oil filler cap gasket is easily detected.
I replace the gasket every 4-5 yrs or so.

[TheMrFailz]

[abscate]

Volvo Valdez..

Send an invoice to the county for your service, free oiling of the highway..

[TheMrFailz]

Alright so I did a few dives into the engine bay and here's what I've got: I don't know how useful any of this is.



As you can probably figure based on the yellow tinge, we've got oil for days.



Top end is slightly less awful other than some (new?) oil on the front side of that little divider that separates the coil area from the belt area at 0:04 seconds. No oil on the back of the block, tons of oil concentrated down there on the skid plate but I figure that's a low point in the engine bay.


I already knew about the oil residue on the top of the block (other than the above) and I suspect that was related to my oil filler cap seal going bad. Side of the block is unsurprisingly coated in a layer of oil.


I tried my best to get a view of behind the serp. belt wheel. Some weird black residue that's potentially old oil.


Overall I didn't see much in the way of definite smoking guns. Based on the black residue though I think it's probable that it's the main crank.

[abscate]

I’m seeing a lot of oil up top, more that gets flung up. I would not rule out a cam seal

[TheMrFailz]

I’m seeing a lot of oil up top, more that gets flung up. I would not rule out a cam seal

Any particular things to look for with a cam seal? I didn't see anything overly obvious other than maybe the fact that the oil is more rear-area biased and the oil film around the cam region.

[abscate]

STart it up and watch the oil stream.

[dj_v70]

Agree with Abscate. But I’d use engine cleaner first, the leak location will be extremely obvious.

[TheMrFailz]

So I got a boat load of oil and brake cleaner and went to town and I'm suprised: The leak is coming from the intake cam. There's a steady stream that comes from right under where it leaves the valve cover:



(note: the second lower arrow is behind the plastic)

And it comes out into another opening between the plastic and the block (NOTE: all pictures after the first one are not mine, my phone keeps crashing when I take a photo with flash now so I can't get a pic). Also worth noting that it doesn't look exactly like this on my engine:



Before dripping out onto the crank where it gets sprayed everywhere. I also cleaned the back of the block along where I believe the cam cover and block meet because it seemed like there was a bit of semi-fresh oil there although it never really came back. Additionally, I was getting some smoke from around here (again, not my pic) from what I assume was oil dripping onto the exhaust: