giddyup21

92 Prelude si4ws - h23

As the title says I have been reading up on common oil leaks for probably five ours or so, and replaced the Oil Coolant O-Ring and Distributor O-Ring last night, but it seems to have made no difference. I also greased up the oil filter gasket and made sure it was intake, as I changed that about 100 miles or less ago, but I had the problem well before then. My problem is that once I get up to normal operating conditions, smoke seems to be coming out evenly from under where the intake manifold meets the block. I get under, and everything around the oil filter on the back of the block seems to be covered in oil. I've narrowed it down to a few things, but I'd like any input to avoid changing out everything only to find out I haven't fixed the problem.

The head gasket was recently replaced and I have no oil / coolant mixing problems or overheating problems. The back of the head has no oil leaking on it, though I do have small pools below the back of the head on both sides (I assumed the passenger side was due to distributor O-Ring, haven't verified whether this has been fixed yet, but smoke is still coming from this side of the engine). So I am assuming this isn't caused by the head gasket, which I applied a lot of RTV silicone to, concentrating on the corners and between the cams when I had it off last night.

I also noticed that I am physically dripping oil onto the driveway, which eliminates an exhaust leak in the catalytic converter which could cause the even smoking coming from below the intake manifold. There is next to no smoke coming from the car when it is idling, but once I pull the throttle cable it immediately starts smoking from under the intake manifold, and as soon as I release it the smoke clears within a few seconds.

My next step is to clean the back and sides of the block as best I can so that I can see exactly where oil is forming, and then if needed replace the 2 cam seals on the timing belt side, and the other cam seal on the distributor side, and replace the valve cover gasket.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for possible causes of oil leaks besides the places I have addressed so far? Has anyone experienced something like this, oil leak across the back of the block, that wasn't caused by the oil coolant o-ring?

Thanks for your help, I'll be watching this thread so please ask about anything I've made unclear about my problem.

93sivtec

It sounds like they did not fix ur headgasket correctly,but idk.Another common spot it leaks from even thought it dosent seem to be where ur leaking from is the front main seal,crank seal.Mine leaked for a year and a half untill I did the timing jobs and replaced it.

Good luck on ur smokey leak.

Mr.Luder

the place where almost everyone one over looks is your valve cover gasket and cam seals when it comes to oil leak from the top

giddyup21

Yeah, I think that's the next step. Replace valve cover gasket and the 3 cam gaskets all at once and see how that does. If it isn't that then it'll have to be: rear/main seals, oil pressure sender unit or head gasket... And i'll either clean it really well so that i can see the leak at that point, or use the UV Dye kit if it's still leaking.

giddyup21

It's the head gasket. Replaced all three cam seals, valve cover gasket, dizzy and oil cooler o-rings and cleaned the engine off so that it was spotless. Now I have an oil stream coming down right out of the head gasket on the passenger side. Can't say for sure that all the other things weren't leaking as well but I do know that this weekend I'll be replacing the head gasket.

Cjexsjiggy

yeah im getting the same leak and im thinking its the head gasket, i get oil trickling down to the bottom of my transmission but im not too sure if its from the head gasket.