Hi All,

Want to get some advice on my 86 prelude. It has 230K on it, still
running very strong. I sometimes cannot resist the temptation to rev
it between 4k-5K to switch gear. Lately, I found a little bit smoke
coming underneath the car and it turned out some oil was dripping onto
the exhaust. I climbed underneath the car and found a oil collecting
around the bolts of the oil pan. My thought was the gasket needs
replacing but some the dealer and some local mechanics suggested that
the prelude seal seldom went bad. It might be the distributor seal.

I looked around my engine and found a little wet around the bottom of
the distributor and a little bit wet at teh edge of the head gasket
around same area. I am not sure if the distributor dripped over there
and caused the area to be wet or not. I assumed something from the top
dripped all the way down and got collected around the bolts of the oil
pan or just the oil pan gasket was gone.

Almost every bolt of the oil pan has some oil around them. Is it
possible to collect that much oil if it is leaking from the
distributor or somewhere else. Any advice on how to do a diagnostic on
this type of oil leak.

It does not leak to a point that I need to refill oil often but it
just happen to drip on a hot place and produced smoke. There are oil
spots overnight as well around the same area. Performance is still
around 4.5K rpm at 90 mph and 3k at 75 mph. I cannot feel any
difference before and after the oil smoke issue was observed.

Thanks a lot for your help. I really want to keep this car until it is
up to 300K since most of my miles are southern CA highway mileage.

Thanks again.

Russell