Oil Leaks
#1
03-06-2020, 08:21 AM
Oil Leaks
Hi all, haven't posted on here in a while but I've been learning about the experience of keeping a car to high mileage (167k in my case). Lots of little nuisance stuff to tend to.
My car was leaking quite a bit of oil and making a mess in the driveway. In the course of fixing this I learned about some common trouble areas
First, the cam cover seal on my car went bad. It's inexpensive and not too hard to replace. The trickiest part is getting the rear coils up and out of their bores and then beneath the cowl cover over the engine. Once you do that, there's just eight bolts or so. The one on the left rear is covered by some stuff mounted to a bracket so that you can't get a wrench onto it. I finally just grabbed the whole thing, bracket and, all and bent it a outward a little so I could get my socket down in there to remove the last bolt.
Next, Honda is notorious for leaking 'cam plugs' on either end of the cylinder head. These are just little round black plastic plugs with an o-ring. Like all o-rings, they shrink, dry out and eventually begin leaking. You can see the one on the right side, just above the engine mount. These are cheap but a little fussy, I had to put in two new ones on the right before it finally sealed up and stopped leaking. What I didn't know was that there's also one on the other end of the cylinder head, well hidden beneath some plumbing and brackets. That stuff takes some time to clear out of the way, and I paid a shop about $200 to get down in there and change that one. This is a good occasion to criticize the Honda parts catalog for not having quantities ... had they shown in the catalog that the car has two of these plugs, then I would have known to go looking for the other one.
Finally, there's a gizmo called the VVT spool valve attached the left front of the cylinder head. This is another notoriously leaky Honda contraption. I pulled mine off and tried replacing the $10 seal that joins it to the head, and luckily, that stopped the leak. Others have it worse, where the spool valve itself leaks (it's made in three parts) and that's very expensive because you have to buy the entire unit (~ $600).
Knock on wood, my engine and driveway will stay dry for a while now.
My car was leaking quite a bit of oil and making a mess in the driveway. In the course of fixing this I learned about some common trouble areas
First, the cam cover seal on my car went bad. It's inexpensive and not too hard to replace. The trickiest part is getting the rear coils up and out of their bores and then beneath the cowl cover over the engine. Once you do that, there's just eight bolts or so. The one on the left rear is covered by some stuff mounted to a bracket so that you can't get a wrench onto it. I finally just grabbed the whole thing, bracket and, all and bent it a outward a little so I could get my socket down in there to remove the last bolt.
Next, Honda is notorious for leaking 'cam plugs' on either end of the cylinder head. These are just little round black plastic plugs with an o-ring. Like all o-rings, they shrink, dry out and eventually begin leaking. You can see the one on the right side, just above the engine mount. These are cheap but a little fussy, I had to put in two new ones on the right before it finally sealed up and stopped leaking. What I didn't know was that there's also one on the other end of the cylinder head, well hidden beneath some plumbing and brackets. That stuff takes some time to clear out of the way, and I paid a shop about $200 to get down in there and change that one. This is a good occasion to criticize the Honda parts catalog for not having quantities ... had they shown in the catalog that the car has two of these plugs, then I would have known to go looking for the other one.
Finally, there's a gizmo called the VVT spool valve attached the left front of the cylinder head. This is another notoriously leaky Honda contraption. I pulled mine off and tried replacing the $10 seal that joins it to the head, and luckily, that stopped the leak. Others have it worse, where the spool valve itself leaks (it's made in three parts) and that's very expensive because you have to buy the entire unit (~ $600).
Knock on wood, my engine and driveway will stay dry for a while now.
Last edited by Tom in Austin; 03-06-2020 at 08:31 AM.
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