davidluko

First, some background info: I recently flew over a curb and bent the suspension - basically everything on the driver's front and the driver's trailing and lower arms. The driver inner and outer tie rods bent but I think the subframe and rack were fine. The car was undriveable and got towed home.

Anyway, my question. I have everything put back together and something is burning oil. The oil pan was dented a little bit but it doesn't look like it's leaking enough to actually be able to leak enough out to burn.

How likely is it that the accident caused damaged to the transmission? How much play are the axles supposed to have, in and out (from driver to passenger side basically)? The only thing I can think of is that oil might be leaking out where one of the axles goes in (well, tranny fluid). When I jacked the car up and let it spin in gear it looked like the axles and wheels were 'bouncing up and down' but I didn't notice anything while driving (everything feels weird of course, cause the alignment is way off). When I drive it I notice is seems harder to put the car into gear, too notchy. I did fill it up with OEM tranny fluid to the proper level, there was no visible external damage to the transmission, and it holds fluid just fine as far as I can tell, when it's not running.

I looked all around with a flashlight and couldn't find any noticeable source of a leak but there were little oil splatters in the VSS area, on the rear motor mount and its bracket, in the charcoal canister area, and on the rack and lower tie bar.

Cliffs: hit a curb, bent a lot of suspension, now the car leaks and burn oil from somewhere unknown; what should I check and what is the possibility of tranny damage causing a leak?

davidluko

Update: both axles feel like they're wiggling too much at the transmission, but I have no other car to compare to and I'm not sure what 'normal' would be. When I wiggle the passenger axle it sounds like the differential area inside the transmission is moving a little bit and making a little clinking noise.

Gearspeed-Performance

iTrader: (1)

I would do this first....Clean everything really good...then run the car and see where the leak is coming from...try to avoid driving it if you can. Hopefully you will find the leak with the car just running at idle. If not drive it a very short distance and check again.

davidluko

I'll start by cleaning everything, checking the fluid levels, and replacing the oil pan gasket.

davidluko

Looks like it was the oil pan gasket, near the back of the engine. I guess the oil got so high up (near the head and on top of the tranny) because it was being flung up by the axles. I don't smell any burning anymore though and I checked the tranny fluid level and put about 1/8th of a bottle extra after it started leaking out of the fill hole and it shifts perfect now.