oil leakage?!?!?

[93MTXSHO_STUD]

OK guys, I'm hoping someone has or had the same problem I do. Well my MTX has an oil leak and it wouldnt bother me so much but when I drive with my friends and run her hard the oil hits the cats and its embarassing. I already replaced the oil pan gasket and the valve covers look good when i told off the intake manifold; same witrh the heads. When I look under my car I see a drop of oil on the crank pulley, something tells me the oil is leaking above from there. I'm thinking the cam seals but theres lots of those any ideas, is there a quick way to check like take the timing belt cover off?

 

[Dr. Tweak]

There are three cam seals, two behind the top timing cover, and one behind the CID.

There is one crank seal, behind the lower cover.

You can pull those parts off and check, I'll betcha it's the rear cam seal. You can get to that fairly easy. If you have a look at my site you'll see where it is.

 

[93MTXSHO_STUD]

that looks like a lot of work, to look at the seals can you get by with just taking the timing cover off?

 

[Dr. Tweak]

yeah, you don't have to do all that.

hang on, i'll find a post where i wrote all the instructions out, i don't feel like doing it again.

 

[Dr. Tweak]

Okay, this is how you replace the CID. You should be able to tell if the cam seal is leaking oil by reaching down and feeling underneath it. If it's leaking then you have some oil dripping there. This is how you replace the CID (you need to get to the seal behind it if it is leaking, more instructions are on my site):

You'll have to unscrew the 8mm bolt holding down the power steering resivoir, the two bolts holding the engine dampener to the bracket on the strut tower, then remove the 3 13mm nuts holding that bracket to the strut tower.

Once you move those things out of your way you should have a pretty clear shot, there are two bolts on each site of the piece that the CID connects to, just take the whole thing off, I think they're 8mm or 10mm. You can't see these bolts, especially the bottom one, but you should be able to feel around for them.

Once you remove the two bolts you'll need to pry the whole thing out, it's in there pretty tight. A large flathead should do the trick. Oh yeah, you should have pulled off the electrical connector by this time. Once you remove the CID then you'll see there are two tiny bolts or screws holding the actual CID to the round bracket or whatever it is. Replace the CID that way. You'll actually see the end of the cam where a metal vane is connected, that is the piece that interacts with the CID. While you're in there, take a good look and make sure that you don't have any oil leaking, there is a cam seal right there and if it leaks it can cause a CID failure.

Now for the other two cam seals, you can pull off the crossover tube with the 2 12mm (i think) bolts and hose clamps, along with the engine dampener (already done if you followed the instructions above). Then you should be able to unscrew all of the long 8mm bolts holding the top cover on. I think to get to one of them you'll have to loosen the rear tensioner, which means you loosen the 14mm nut, and then use a really long extension to get to the 5mm Hex bolt on the top on the tensioner, and turn it counter-clockwise. Then you should be able to remove the upper timing belt cover.

Once you get it off you should be able to see behind the cam sprockets and see if oil is dripping down there.

Then the other thing to check is the crank seal, and since it's such a pain to remove the lower cover, you can really just look under there and see if oil is leaking out the bottom of the lower timing cover, there's a little weephole there.

Here's a pic of the lower timing cover removed, and you can see it has a bad crank seal: (hope you don't mind I used your pic Jeremy)

Those are the basic steps, all that stuff is on the website with pics so you can check it out there, along with how to replace all the cam seals and crank seal.