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Do you smell something funny? The leak looked pretty bad because there was oil from
front to back underneath the car. I put the car up on jack-stands and began to
look for the leaky area. I should have taken a picture of the underside because I could see drips everywhere so out came some rags to
mop up the mess.
After I had most of the oil cleaned up, I still
didn't know exactly where it was coming from, but it had to be from one of
two places, the front of the oil pan or from the timing cover seal where
the harmonic balancer goes. What I needed to do now was start the car
and then look for the problem.
I called on my wife to work the throttle while I was under the car
and after a few minutes of it running, I had a drip or two. I used a rag
and cleaned off the drips again and It looked like it was coming from
the front of the oil pan. Then after another minute I really wasn't
convinced that it was the pan so I shut off the motor and cleaned things
really well one more time.
Round two of running the engine but this time I didn't see
anything new so I crawled out from under the car and grabbed a handful of gas pedal till I saw the shift
light come on a couple of times (6000 RPM) and headed back under the
car. Sure enough I had some more oil and it looked like it was the oil
pan again, but looking a little closer I noticed a small amount on the
bottom of the timing cover this time. Gotcha!! So now I knew what the problem was,
the timing cover seal was bad.
After ordering some new parts, it was time to take things apart. After
removing the grill, I noticed how dirty everything was but I guess after
three years of driving I was bound to have a few bugs and dirt here and
there.
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