| Locating cause of oil leak and various other things.
Hello all,
I was working on the car this weekend and wanted to get a few things done. First thing I wanted to do was replace the front rotors and pad, then I wanted to replace the front sway bar bushing, and lastly locate a pesky oil leak.
Front rotors and pad: Thanks to the DIY everything went pretty smooth. Driver side wheel took about 30 mins to replace rotor and pads. The driver side however was frozen. Nothing some WD-40 and whacks with a hammer couldn't fix. I did ended up using a breaker bar to lever the old rotor off. Orignally planned to do both front and back, but after looking at the wear on the back rotors, i decided to hold off on the replacement. SUCCESS!
Front sway bar bushings: Thanks to G-AMG and ZX11 for posting a how-to. Well, i got all the parts ready, and borrowed the tools needed. Figured I'd do this while I was doing the brake job. Nah-uh. Got stuck on the first step. Used a T-50 torx bit on the end link, but could not get it to budge. Facing the bolt, I turned it counter clockwise and it's not moving. I put so much force on it that it even bent the bit. Applied WD-40 and waited but it still would budge. Had to put this one off until i get some sorta tip to remove that sucker. FAILURE!
Locating oil leak: Ok, i developed this oil leak awhile back, just a few drops showed up wherever i parked. But lately, it's getting worse. I was putting this off untill i had all the parts I needed for the previous 2 jobs.
Symptoms: It's not a constant leak so I figurd it's not drain plug or oil pan seal. It seems like it only leak after I'm done driving, like when the oil is heading back to the pan from the engine. Location of leak is hard to pinpoint from looking at where the drops are due to covers on the bottom
Ok, so i removed the covers and wipe any oil residue from the bottom of the engine. Started engine and let it run, stopped it, and just layed on the crawler with a flashlight lookin for the drip. It doesn't drip right away, about 5 mins after engine stop.
Location: The leak is coming from the front of the engine closer to the driver side. I can see it coming from my A/C compressor, but i'm pretty sure it's coming from somewhere above that. Does anyone know what the cause of this leak is? Is it the main seal? I was planning on finally taking my car in to do the harmonic balancer recall (ok, i'm a procrastinator). Was wondering if I could save some money by having this fixed while they are redoing the HB.
Sorry for the long post. |