I recently had a catastrophic oil loss, maybe only .5 quarts left in the system. The engine was only run for 20 seconds and there's no extra noise and it still seems to run fine after I fixed the problem and added new oil. Could I have lunched the oil pump from starving it of oil? What about a front main seal? The car has 50k on it and the leak is very slow. I haven't had the timing covers off or anything like that yet. The only other symptom is a slight clattering on startup, which happens whether the oil system is pressurized or not. It comes from the belt side, doesn't seem to be coming from the head itself.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot.


[Modified by SiLooksStock, 3:14 AM 3/19/2003]

 

Bump, already on 2nd page after 1 hour

 

could be ur headgasket..

 

pull the valvecover and cheak the cam seals...they can go out at anytime. i also had a valve cover gasket go and do the same thing. check those two and im pretty sure ull find it. good luck and i hope its one of those cause they are cheap to fix.

 

Pulled the valve cover and upper timing cover off. I checked the cam seals and valve cover gasket, they're fine. Top end of the engine is totally dry. It's not the headgasket either, so that's some good news. Guess I'll have to pull the crank pulley off to find out what's going on under there. Anybody had this happen? Leak coming from engine block rather than cylinder head?

 

its prolly your oil pump... the only place i can think of is the cam seals but then again its not coming from the head...a head gasket wouldnt leak oil like what your discribing(at least not to my knowledge) so take that pully off and check that pump..

hope it helps

 

If it was your front main seal it would DUMP oil. I blew mine in my old car and it sprayed oil everywhere.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too after looking carefully at my Helm's. Spinning it with little to no oil at the pickup probably didn't make it very happy. I hope there aren't any shavings in there.

I was thinking it wasn't a crank seal because my omni covered itself in oil when the front crank seal went on the highway, lost 4 quarts in 30 minutes. Never happened to me on a Honda before though, so I wasn't sure.

 

time for all new seals and pumps.... and possible a rebuild while your at it

 

Same here.

After 6000miles on my b16a2 I lost the front oil seal. I'd loose over a quart a day.

 

I just changed my front seal. Took a little over and hour and $40 in parts and oil.

 

is the front seal the same as the crank seal? where is the front main seal at?

 

Behind the crank pulley.