Good day everyone, thanks for all the helpful info on this forum.

I have a severe oil leak on my 2004 Civic with a 1.7l. I did the headgasket a little over a month ago due to air getting into the coolant system. But now I have a pretty major oil leak that is getting up under the whole driver side A arm and engine. I initially believed it to be a leaking valve cover gasket since it was wet up top behind the timing cover, when I pulled the valve cover off the original gasket was pretty wet, I replaced it and it APPEARS that the area is 'less wet now'.

However, I still am losing oil, so I drove the car up on ramps, started it and let it run for a few minutes, sure enough in no time, I got a nice puddle directly under the crank pulley. So my questions:

1. Is this a pretty good indicator the main seal (maybe called the oil pump seal?) is failed? It does not seem to leak when the engine is off, but I can't totally verify that. Or is this just the bottom of everything and the leak is likely coming from elsewhere and just exiting here? (When I pulled the valve cover, the timing belt was dry and showed no signs of being oil soaked)

2. IF it is a main seal failure, how involved is this to replace? I've done 2 headgaskets, 1 timing belt and an engine swap for this model before so while I'm not UNfamiliar with it, I'm leaning toward letting a pro with a lift do this...

3. It seems very odd that shortly after headgasket replacement I had this failure, trying to rack my brain to see if something else could be causing it that was involved in the headgasket work, FYI I did not do a timing belt and water pump at the same time, so the crank pulley was not touched.

Thank you in advance!

 

If you've ever done a timi9ng belt it shouldn't be that much harder . There's a special tool to get the crank bolt off or use an impact , and then I imagine the main seal is right there

 

Turns out the camshaft seal behind the timing sprocket slipped off and was allowing oil by and leaking out of the very bottom of the timing cover.

 

Good to hear you found the source , It can be deceiving some times