Oil pan gasket gone?

[Camryfanatic]

Hi guys, its been awhile since I posted something here. Well it looks my Camry is acting up now for some reason. My problem is an oil leak somewhere that I can't find. I recently put in Mobil 1 oil in my car 5w-30 because where I live and also put in the mobil 1 oil filter also. Now after two weeks or so after the oil change I found oil leaking on the passenger side of the car leaking off of the chasis frame, found it this weekend. This only happened after we had a really bad deep freeze in chicago. Before that, no leaks what so ever. I use to use Valvoline Max Life oil for the car and never had this problem, after I was reading that Mobil 1 was better than Valvoline oil on this forum, I said what the heck lets do it.

Now I'm guessing that my oil pan gasket is totally gone on the passanger side of the car, am I right? How much is it to fix and should I totally dump Mobil 1 out before it attacks the head gasket?

My car is a 1992 Camry LE I4 with 149129 miles. I think the user before me was using regular dyno oil before I went semi-syntheic with valvoline.


Please help me!!!

[Cyorke]

Any time you ahve oil leaks you want to start at the top and work your way down. Have you checked the valve cover gasket, the dist. o-ring, nad the oil cooler mount on the front of the engine where the oil filter is screwed on. The oil pan does not ahve agasket per se. THey use gray RTV sealant from the factory.

[Camryfanatic]

Well I finally tried a little experiment with the car. Before I changed it i had it ran for 5 minutes before I did this, after five minutes I found a nice big pool of oil on the driveway. I dumped the mobil 1 oil, jesus H. Christ, that motor oil is like water!!! I bought myself 4 bottles of MaxLife oil and a fram filter, I had it run for 15 minutes and now its down to a droplets in back somewhere, by the screw on the bottom of the pan. Could it just be seal that went bad?

I'LL NEVER BUY MOBIL 1 OIL EVER AGAIN!!! $5.49 for a bottle is way too rich for my blood!

Maxlife oil vs Mobil 1 =

[marc780]

Synthetic will seep out gaskets more readily than dino as you found out, if you had a leak before synthetic might make it worse, its just the chemistry of it. You could try tightening the oil pan bolts a little but sounds like the fix is replace the seal on the pan. Or live with it like you're doing.

Seldom do oil leaks fix themselves, they usually get worse unfortunately. So if it were my engine, i think it would bug me enough to where id eventually get around to doing it.

According to my haynes manual, since you have the 4 you just unbolt and remove the front exhaust pipe, and then the front block-to-transaxle brace and you can unbolt the pan. For the V-6, its the same procedure plus remove the flywheel housing cover.

[73sport]

So you say it got really cold?

Did you check your antifreeze to find its freezing point? What I was thinking is if your block started to freeze and maybe it moved/cracked something like that and your seeing now as an oil leak.....

Check your antifreeze, then find out just how cold it did get. If the car was left exposed too long it a water jacket may have created a crack somewhere.

When you drained the expensive oil, was it overful? Did it have a milkshake look to it?

Keep an eye on the level of both the coolant and the oil.

Regards,

RA

[hooRAH]

I'm actually having a very similar problem. If its leaking on the passenger side, there is a good chance its from one of the front engine seals. If you want to be sure, jack up the passenger side, remove the wheel and the cover (like you're going to change belts), and run the car. This will give you a better idea of where its leaking.

As far as the oil...

I've been running the mobil 1 syn in my GFs camry for awhile because there was a concern about the sludging of this engine. Now about a year later, its developed this leak. Since synthetic leaks more than regular, and hearing your good news, I'm going to switch back to maxlife. At the very least, it will slow the leak and buy me some time to replace the seal. Good to hear, thanks for posting.

[Camryfanatic]

The antifreeze is still dark green the day that I got that done. This weekend I'm going to trouble shoot it, with a friend thats a ASE toyota mech. Where exactly is the o-ring for the distriburer and also if my head gasket is gone would the engine start sucking up the antifreeze? my antifreeze is still at the same level.

Another thing after I came home from school I took off the oil cap and I saw a milky white compound that was at the top of the cap itself. Whenever i dump the oil its always black and that crap isn't in it.

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE

[TriumphGT6]

When I rebuilt the 98 5SFE Camry, I didn't like that the oil pan didn't use a real gasket, that it used that RTV sealant. I've worked on other cars with that crap, and it doesn't always work that well. Here's what I did:

I took the pan off, then I cleaned all the crap off it. I went to Napa and bought a sheet of cork for $8. I traced the outline of the oil pan with a sharpie onto the cork. Then the tricky part comes into play; you have to measure how wide the mating surface on the oil pan is, and its not the same everywhere, and then measure and appropriately mark the gasket. Now cut it out.

Now you put the gasket underneath the pan, and through each screwhole you mark where the screws are, and then you go through with a punch and punch em out. It took me start to finish, about 2 hours to do all that was mentioned, included degreasing the pan before doing this.

When you put it on, its a good idea to put a very thin layer of RTV sealant on the oil pan lip so the gasket seals, and so that it stays in position when you put it on the engine.

Good Luck,
GT6

[ecucio]

It maybe the oil pan gasket but do inspect the oil pump as well. Check this previous posting. ===> http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/t116989.html

[alltracwagon]

I suspect that the seal around the oil pump shaft is leaking, if
that car has a timing belt driven oil pump. I've just ordered one
for my 88 celica for 6 bucks or so. If your engine has an oil pump built around the crankshaft, like the 4AFE of my alltrac wagons, then the leak is the front main seal, about 4 bucks.

The job is not hard to do, it's like a timing belt change, but
add changing the seals. I pry them out with small screwdrives
that I have removed all the sharp edges from, and put in the new seals with permatex #2 on the metal outsides and generous amounts of black moly grease on the rubber insides + a thin film on the crankshaft/oilpump shaft. If it's the oilpump seal with a belt driven oilpump you will need the
oddly shaped gasket/oring that mounts the pump body as
well, cause the oil pump has to come off to change that seal.

I don't want to start a flame war about synthetic oil, but my experince with it in well used subaru wagon was that
oil leaks sprang from every gasket, the pvc/vent hoses became
brittle like glass and broke like glass when I tried to remove them. Other vacuum lines split where they were pressed onto
barbs.

That white stuff you see under the oil cap is sludge which can
be the death of an engine. Assuming you don't have some sort of water leak into the engine, you need to change your oil and filter a lot more often. If you do a lot of short trips and the oil does not heat up fully/for a long time, you never boil off the water that gets into it as a normal part of blowby gas etc.

When this gets real bad, like in cars with permanently open thermostats, you might see a light beige layer in the bottom
of the oil drain pan. That is oil saturated with water (yes I know they are not supposed to mix) and you will see it when you pour the black oil off the top and get to the bottom of the pan.

As for oil, I get the "certified" brand at sams club, and just
change it when it gets the color of very strong tea.

[73sport]

RTV GASKETS:
just adding my 2 cents about properly preparing surfaces so your pride doesn't leave puddles.

* OIL PANS - pans that had cork gaskets often get over torqued and the metal stretches at each bolt hole. Stick a small socket on the pan rail and use a ball peen hammer to knock down any high spots so that the pan rail is flat.

* Remove all the old material leaving nothing behind on either part.
* Clean the area with solvent.
* Now Clean it AGAIN with Lacqure Thinner. Clean until your white towel stays white!
* Fill any voids with RTV like where the front cover meets the block.
* Apply a continious bead of RTV around the pan. Don't allow large quantities on the inner edge as these can come loose over time and stick in the oil sump or plug oil passages!

* Tighten the pan bolt to spec and leave them alone. Cus if you tighten them after the RTV is hard, it cuts the RTV and you can have another leaker

Success = Clean, very clean
Failure = Trying to Glue RTV to oily surface

* IF YOU USE GASKETS: Paper or Cork, Spray every edge of them with "Spray Copper Coat" this will keep the oil from seaping through the gasket (and it adds nice contrast to painted block). It is messy, but worth your time. If you don't have Copper Coat, use Gloss paint of your color choice.
* Seal small voids of mating parts with tiny amount of RTV, then apply gasket.

Hope this helps somebody...

/ra

[jerm]

just got my oil changed on sat and i just took notice of a leak in the same spot, i just got mobil 1 full syn too, maybe just a coincidece. but now it woories me i got a 95 v6 and it is coming from the pass side and dripping on to the a chassi, itook notice because i hit a squirral on the way to work and i wanted to see if it was stuck.

[Camryfanatic]

Well I think I FINALLY figured it out. I found out that its leaking way too much and the oil that is dripping is way too thin to be motor oil I suspect its PS fluid. So I'm waiting and see if my PS fluid go below the low line before I do anything. I'm not going to waste $$$ on a wild goose chase to find an oil leak somewhere.

What do you think?

[noodlerooney]

Felpro does make a cork gasket for the Gen3 oilpan, just bought one, factory was just sealant. Yes, by all means try to locate exactly what is leaking before trying to fix it.

[marc780]

Camryfanatic, i'd steam clean the engine at the first opportunity. And then watch for the leaks or feel with a paper towel. Otherwise its a frustrating guessing game.