I had oil, drove 40 miles home from a branch office on the north-side of Jax.

Got to the end of my road and the oil light started flashing. Knowing that this meant 'dry sump' from my previous prelude - and my forgetting to put the drain plug back, I knew something had gone horribly wrong. And since was not on recirculate I began to smell burning oil.

I was at the end of my road so I gathered a head of steam and then shut it down, coasting into my driveway. I looked underneath, no dripping. so I popped the hood and saw that. I promptly ran in the house and grabbed the 3 1/2 Qts. of oil I had and poured it in, fired the car back up to make sure the engine wasnt seized, it still started and idled as it always does. I then shut it down and looked under it again, no drips untill about 15 minutes later (thankfully after I had shoved a piece of plywood under it.

Valve cover gasket "blow out"?

Or if memory serves correct there's some type of gasket near the top of the head around the VTEC solenoid?

All I know is the entire passenger side was covered, and the dipstick was bone dry.

 

you should be able to see if its coming from the vualve cover gasket? maybe an oil switch

 

christ dude

anything comming from the camshaft area?? you are gonna have to degrease before you could even begin guessing lol

 

Lets work on probabilities...

What is probable to have gone wrong, given the coverage, and location. I dont have time to diagnose it myself, and I dont wanna pay some hack $70/hr to tell me a line of ****. So I turn to you, brave experts of Honda-Tech.

 

cam seal

 

x2

but regardless you wont know... better yet no one will know... until you get all that oil out

 

I'm thinking camshaft seal, FTW.

but is the pump capable of pumping ~5 qts. of oil out in an 1/8 mile or so?

I'm gonna go home and bury my face in my Chilton's manual.

 

wow, in for the cause of that mess. good luck, id clean it up real nice, fill it up with oil, run it and watch closely, maybe wear some snowboard goggles as well lol.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Really freak out the neighbors, ya know. I'll probably seafoam it at the same time. Keep in mind Floridians know nothing of snowboard goggles yet for some reason I have a pair.

I'm in a Zen kinda mood today, so I see it like this: At least nothing in my engine bay will rust any time soon.

 

this.

and

this:
since you're going to be changing a cam seal, might as well knock out other seals too. valvecover, sparkplug tubes, distributor o-ring, and the v-tec solenoid one too.

 

^-- bingo, just do em all (same rule for girls i guess.)

If its leaking oil as profusely as you claim, then it should be apparent. I myself hate doing more work than I need to so I work smarter instead of harder. Check in the order of easiest to hardest to replace. If your distributor O-ring for example took a **** like mine did on my first prelude, it's a 5 minute fix. VC gasket is also a fairly easy fix, cam seal on the other hand is a pain in the *** because you have to remove oh so much **** to get to it

just my 2 cents.

 

cam seal is 4 more bolts than valve cover gasket?

the hardest part looks to be the clean up of that mess...

 

my prelude just did the same thing started it after sitting for a while was the cam seal , but i would check the vtec solenoid too