Hi there. I went to change my oil today on my 99 Honda Civic LX (D16Y7) and noticed a pretty fast leak that wasn't there before. When inspecting the underside of the car, oil appears to run along the entire length of the oil pan, from the timing cover to the transmission, and even on the transmission. I changed my timing belt, front main seal, and all that jazz about 20k miles ago. I took the upper timing cover off just now and tried to look down towards the front main seal as best as I could and see only a small amount of oil, but it almost looks like it's just lightly trickling in from the manifold cover. It's obviously too difficult to see for certain without taking off the lower cover, but it really looks like there isn't much down there.

Based on this information, do you guys think I should hedge my bets on an oil pan gasket? Or should I try my best to sneak the lower timing cover off just to be safe? (I live in an apartment complex so I have to be a ninja about this type of work. I'd rather not take the lower cover off unless you guys think it's a must.) I've owned the car for about 60k miles and never changed the oil pan gasket, so I hope it's just that. Thanks for any help. As it currently stands, my car is completely drained of oil and I don't want to fill it back up until I have a fighting chance at making the leak stop.

 

Where are you located? Maybe there is some civic guy in your hood that would lend you a garage\driveway.

 

Either place will only leak while the engine is running, so you can go ahead and refill with new oil-- it will stay put in the pan until you start the engine.

You could take the top cover off (which is of course much simpler than the lower cover) and if you see oil all over the timing belt, etc. it's definitely the crank seal. It is easy to damage a new seal during installation, so I don't like to replace them pre-emptively during a timing belt job.

 

@ David_S: I'm in the Houston, TX area. I think I may have found a garage to explore this a bit, thanks for the great idea though.

@ mk378: I've said it before and I'll say it again, thanks for always replying to tech questions. So I went ahead and replaced the oil pan gasket only because some of the nuts and bolts were like.... fingertight. I'm actually surprised they didn't go flying off. I was really hoping that would fix it. Unfortunately, my leak is still coming out at a fast rate at the same spot: the lower timing cover. Perhaps my gasket technique was poor. I used a FelPro gasket since I was in a hurry to get this fixed today, and I didn't let the sealant dry... am I supposed to?

At any rate, since it's still coming out of the lower cover, I'm guessing that my crank seal is shot. The sad thing is that I used all Honda OEM parts when I replaced all of that stuff a year and a half ago. When I remove the top cover, there isn't any oil on the timing belt. I see only a light trace down into the lower cover area. I'm not really sure what to do... It sounds like I'm going to need to take everything apart again if I'm understanding the situation correctly.

 

You will need to take apart enough to see exactly where the leak is. You can run the engine with the timing belt covers off as long as you put the crank pulley back on and tighten the bolt fully.

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