burninrock24

I've got a weird one for you all. I have a 89 Civic that has a D16A6 swapped into it and bolted to the stock 89 4-speed. When I run the car on the track, it starts to smoke out of the engine bay, and there is oil all over the passenger side of the engine.

We had changed the oil and oil fiter previous to this happening. After about 7 laps we took it off the track and noticed all of the leaking.

We originally thought it was trans fluid so we replaced the seal and had the CV joint looked at and had a burr removed from the section that comes in contact with the oil seal. We also refilled the transmission with MTL manual trans fluid.

We took it back to the track and within 2 laps it was doing it again. Fluid was not red like the trans oil that we just put in. Which lead us to think that it was motor oil.

The problem is that it is only the passenger side that was affected. Everything right of the flywheel is completely dry.

Any ideas? Thanks.

BIGef

Did you try checking where the leak is coming from. try and check if its leaking from the distributor,valve cover, headgasket

burninrock24

Yeah thats the problem its almost like it got sprayed or spun all over the engine bay. And it doesn't leak or leave puddles when sitting. So its nearly impossible to tell where it originally came from.

The Intake tube, Throttle-Body, and Intake manifold are all dry. So that rules out the overfill nozzle on the valve cover.

It could be somewhat leaking out of the distributor, then maybe down to the CV/Axle and getting spun around. But it doesn't seem like a likely candidate either.

And since these are the only things that could be leaking oil on that side of the motor I have to believe that its not motor oil. But it simply doesn't seem like trans oil either, but the red color could have been lost with the grime of the engine coming off along with it.

We filled the trans fluid with the car up on a jack and slightly over-filled it. But not by a huge margin. We took out the top-off bolt (or whatever you want to call it) and let the excess drain out of the trans. Do you think that this could have been the problem? Excess fluid?

bk7794

What about the rear main seal?

burninrock24

Yeah I thought about that, but if the rear main seal was gone then there would be oil in the bellhousing of the trans and its bone dry for the most part.

Plus the oil got nearly everywhere on the passenger side of the car. I mean hood, trans, starter, bottom of intake tube, CV and CV boot, Axle, inside of wheel, brake shield, etc. But basically everything right of the flywheel is untouched.

villc713

Run the car without a hood and have a passenger watch engine bay while driving

Nickeg9Ej1

check the back of the block where the black box that the pcv valve goes in to is, maybe the o ring has gone bad or the black box itself has gotten damaged.

burninrock24

So it turns out that the valve cover gasket unseated itself on the rear left corner. Which was spurting oil all over. Bought a higher quality gasket from NAPA (instead of autozone) and no problems during the 35 laps at 7500rpms.