oil leak

[Alpine]

Just noticed that on my garage floor this evening were a few drops of oil, maybe a bit bigger than a 50p coin. Had a look under the front of the car and there was a bit of a wet patch under the middle of the engine.

You'll have to excuse my ignorance here as the bits under the bonnet are not my thing, but is this a bad sign of big bills to come? Its done 136k miles, so maybe a bit of a leak is to be expected at those sorts of miles??

Can anyone advise? - many thanks.

 

[wjk_glynn]

It may not be catastrophic, but you should have your mechanic take a look. As an example, my S2 with 133K miles has three different oil leaks: (1) oil pan; (2) rear main seal and (3) headgasket at the rear of the engine. The leak rates are low enough that I've decided to simply live with them instead of spending the money to get them repaired. Back in 2006, I had a leak at the front of the engine and I had that take care of immediately as the oil (in that location) damages belts and bushings. I also had all the belts and rollers redone at the same time. The costs (in US dollars) were: [ul][*]Front engine reseal kit (p/n 944-101-000-00), 1x $116.35 [*]Steel bushings (p/n 928-105-139-02), 3x $22.95 [*]Brake cleaner, 1x $5.95 [*]Timing belt (p/n 944-105-323-02), 1x $123.69 [*]Counter balance belt (p/n 944-102-219-02), 1x $68.01 [*]Tensioner roller (p/n 944-105-631-10), 1x $99.94 [*]Counter balance belt tensioner (p/n 944-102-025-06), 1x $43.48 [*]Counter balance belt roller (p/n 944-102-277-04), 1x $60.77 [*]Timing belt roller on the water pump (p/n 944-105-241-03), $48.37 [*]Labor, 5.5x hours at $128.80/hour ($708.40 total labor)[/ul] Karl.

 

[sawood12]

The problem with these cars is that due to the under tray it is virtually impossible to trace leaks visually as the oil gets blown all over the place so where it is dripping is likly to be nowhere near where the actual leak is. If you have a couple of hours spare one tip I have used is to remove the bottom under-tray and give the bottom of the engine a bit of a clean up to remove any excess oil. Take the car out for a spin to get everything upto temp then drive it back and place a white clean sheet under the car. Go in and have a cup of tea then come out to see where it is dripping then you can start to try to trace the leak. In my case the drip appeared to be coming from the lower balance shaft seal. However a bit more investigation found it was actually coming from the oil filter housing gasket, dripping down the side of the block, pooling in a cast recess on top of the lower balance shaft housing, then overflowing and dripping off the lower balance shaft housing making it look like it was the balance shaft seal. Cost me about £150 for my specialist to fix when it was in for a service. It is one of those jobs that is a PITA so I couldn't be bothered to do it myself.