so ive been out of town on work all week get home tonight and took my car for a few mile drive to the pizza joint and when heading home for the hell of it i started up my car and opened the hood and smoke was coming from the passenger rear of the engine, take her home, check oil and its LOW, called up my buddy who knows cars and worked at a few shops, (now he is on to bigger things) and he tells me to check the value cover area, so i yank all the damn plastic covers and there is no new sign of oil really (a lil but nothing that would make my car have low oil, so i jump under the car and its all covered in oil, on the phone still with him im looking around and my oilpan screws all have oil drips from them well not drips but oil on them like they would be dripping if had the chance, now he tells me it could be my front or rear seals or my oilpan seal etc etc, he says its prob not my rear main seal because there is oil drips on the front part of my oil pan.

but let me tell you the oil is on my frame, the steering rod, all over the bottom, he said the smoke was due to oil being on the exshaust so thats what i HOPE the smoke was, but yea i gotta pretty bad leak somewhere but it doesnt seem to be from the top end where the oil should be leaking, but then again i got the best look of the vaulse covers and it didnt seem to be that i dont think which he frist told me to look


sorry i didnt paragraph this right, writing has never been my thing lol

so any help or anything is great, i think i will have to take it into a shop to have them tell me where its coming from

i dont think i will really drive it until i find out whats wrong lol

now just a side note to this he said it could also be power steering fuild, would that cause smoke to have a oil smell to it? ill check that fuild tommorow morning, but i do belive this to be oil down there its all over everything towards the front of the frame


thanks guys, this was not what i was looking forward to coming home to, was just going to eat shower and take off and drive her a little and now thats not happening

stressing in Seattle


EDIT
Also i did notice that someone left a gasket that look like this down in the engine compartment as well so i dont know what it was for a old one they dropped or a part they forgot to put on whoever did it last or what not, the middle part

also when i noticed it at the pizza place there was a lil smoke on both side in the rear but mainly passenger side

ive also read a few post about this and this is common ? i like to do things on my own but i dont want to mess up things, im a total try to fix one thing ends up needing more stuff type of thing

 

Follow the oil to the highest place you can see it leak from. Or the highest place you can see wetness. Oil can spread all over the place pretty easily. If your car is that soaked it's either been leaking a long time (there will be oily dirt everywhere) or you have a severe pressure leak and it all leaked out quickly (Fresh oil everywhere, not caked with dirt...usually).

I'm not certain if there are any pressure lines in the back there, seeing as the oil filter assembly is on the driver's front. But, valve covers can leak quite badly, and are a cheap fix. If you have a hard time pinpointing a leak, clean the engine really well, then check it. You can also take it to a shop, I introduce a UV dye to engines with leaks I can't pinpoint.

Just don't let it run low.

Edit: That's a valve cover gasket....which is hilarious, did someone work on the car and forget to put it back on? At any rate, doing a valve cover gasket is very much an easy DiY.

 

i dont know its just there lol

but its new oil from the last oil change not to much grit or grim in it, but all over the place from the front mainly, ive already searched the top part that i could see from the top and doesnt seem to be the valve cover gasket.

ive had this car a very short time, so im going to take it to a shop to have them pinpoint it, how much time on avg it take, going by that to see how much money it would be to have it checked out. im not driving it until i put oil in it and take it to a place that can do it tommorow

 

Probabaly the valve cover gaskets. Take a spark plug tube out. covered in oil? if so its valve cover gaskets. they fail commonly on the 30v just had both mine replaced. same symptoms as you. and they are easy but when you do it always makes sense to do cam chain tensionr gaskets and cam seals because they are probally leaking also.

 

so just take the spark plug tubes out? if they oily start there? k thanks, im still thinking its something more then that thou

i will be going to go get some 5-30 full syn to throw in her later on this morning then going to trouble shoot her

 

pulled the plug wires, very little oil on them, so im guessing thats not the problem

im going go have her looked at if i can get her in today, on my way to go get oil for her, in my honda so i dont damage anything more then i may have yesterday

EDIT
update
so i put a quart of oil in her and she seems to be running better (i hope), what does bubles on the dipstick mean? i think i put a lil too much oil in it but thats ok i think not much but a lil more, then i drove her down the strip at 100mph and came home and the oil reading a bit lower now(where its supposed to be i think i have hard time reading the oil lol)

 

Very little means bad gasket there should be none. ALS that's only one part of the gasket. It's not hard to remove the valve covers if you have time take them off and check them

 

i looked again at the lug wires and in the inside there is a lil oil too, so that might be the problem?

 

Definently

 

i put a peice of cardboard down, if those seals are bad how much oil will leak, and now it looks like im leaking a bit on the backside under the passenger wheel area

im taking it to a shop lol, i also think its leaking from the oil pan too

DAM LEAKS!