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Oil Leak yet to be found

afjeep2082

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Portland, Or
It's been awhile since I've ran my Jeep...about 6 months. It has a massive oil leak that is getting everything in the engine bay covered in oil. I mean I changed my battery and there was a puddle of oil in the tray.

Now what is happening is mostly the passenger side of the bay is getting oil soaked. My front steering and susp. is soaked and dripping. Before it sat when I took longer road trips, IE 30min to an hour, the oil would even begen to spray from under the hood onto my windshield.And when I park it drips from the back and front of the engine mostly but there are a few drips inbetween.

Things I have done is cleaned the bay and watched for it with no avail as it really doesnt show untill after a longer road trip and by then it's everywhere. I have re-sealed the valve cover and replaced the o-rings on the oil filter adapter. I have been stumped on this for a long time and it seems not many people have any idea either. When I started it today after it has sat I had a few drips immediately up front and a nice puddle in the back. I guess it could be a rear main but how would the front get oily from a rear main? any out of the box ideas?

1993 Jeep Cherokee Sport
4.0 Automatic
 
front main? timing cover? did you make sure there was no gasket material left when you replaced the valve cover gasket? have you had someone rev the motor with you head under the hood looking for any leaks?
 
My neighbor bought an old Dodge Dakota that had some serious oil leak problems... everything was covered with oil...very hard to figure out where it was all coming from. So what he did was put some kind of dye in the oil that would show up with a black light. turned out it was leaking from several different places. The engine harness was contaminated with oil, along with most sensors, etc. Engine performance was the pits. He ended up pulling the motor to clean up everything , go through it all, then reinstalled the motor. Worked out well for him, everything is clean and no leaks! Motor runs very well. He is glad he went that route.
 
If i had to guess, I would have to say that your leak is somewhere on the very front of your engine. Afert a trip it may accumulate enough where it drips onto one of your belt pulleys and then the pulley proceeds to sling it all over the place add to that the help of the fan and you've have the equivilant of an oil sprinkler. Chk.....Chk.....Chk.....Chk......T.T.T.T.
 
thanks for the ideas guys, i had thought of the same thing was "hopeing" it might be something easy that I was just missing. guess I'll dye the oil and shoot a black light at it. I hope it's not the front main :-/ though I have a bad feeling it is :-(......anyother ideas where i should look please feel free to chime in
 
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