replace the oil pan gasket

Hopefully that will fix it


"russell chung" <rchung@myronl.com> wrote in message
news:bbf5b623.0308290929.6b6806c4@posting.google.c om...
> 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