Welp... I think I just cracked my F20C block today.
Background: My AP1 was significantly lowered by the previous owner and I've been meaning to raise it.

I was driving today and scraped the underside of the car on a lowered gate barcade. It sounded pretty bad but the car kept running fine.

Shortly after I noticed some white smoke coming from the engine bay in the near the exhaust manifold (towards the firewall).

When I pulled into the garage, I noticed that its leaking a little oil and the garage smells like hot coolant.

Sounds like a cracked block right? I'll probably get the car raised tomorrow to get a better look. Any ideas where to look?

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Ouch! I speculate cracking the block might not be the case. Check for points of contact and go from there.

Oil pan damage perhaps?

 

Lowered car + scraping ground + leaking oil + smoke near exhaust almost always means damaged oil pan.

The only part that doesn't quite fit is coolant smell. Oil burned in combustion chamber is blue. But oil on hot exhaust often white. But it'd have distinct burnt oil smell. Maybe thatis what you mistook for coolant odor?

So long as oil level didn't drop too low, you'd probably be ok. Replace pan, raise car. No problems.

But it woukd have been good if you checked oil level right then. To know how low it was when engine was run. By now, a lot more oil will have leaked, and no real way to know if engine is gonna be fine, or potentially junked.

You can however guess based on size of oil puddle there now. Dipstick + puddle = how much oil was in oan when engine shut down.

If dipstick now reads empty, and no real huge oil puddle there now, that would be major concern.

But block should still be intact, and would still have value to someone wanting to rebuild.

 

 

So… I solved the coolant smell mystery. Turns out I’m an idiot and didn’t recap my coolant overflow hose after filling my coolant reservoir. Staying true to my username I suppose.

This doesnt really answer the white smoke issue, however. I checked the oil dipstick and it’s full. The ground has a couple of drops of oil located below the area where the oil pan and transmission mate. I did spot what might be a crack or stress fracture but it’s not actively leaking from that point.

I also noticed that there’s oil present on the area between the head and the valve cover closest to the firewall and the exhaust manifold. Could the valve cover gasket be the smoking gun? I did just installed a new gasket relatively recently. I bought some UV dye that’ll probably help me with troubleshooting this a little more.

 

That looks like casting marks which is perfectly normal.
Try and clean the engine as much as possible as it will help a lot finding any leaks, that valve cover gasket seems very likely though.

 

There's a prescribed 3-step torque sequence for the valve cover bolts that's designed to insure equal sealing of the gasket. Only 8.7 lbf-ft torque at the final torque.

-- Chuck

 

Concur casting marks, normal.

Concur likely to be valve cover gasket leak. Might as well do valve adjustment while in there.

Use my 180away method:

1. Throw away instructions
2. Rotate engine (19 mm socket) until cam lobes for valve you want to adjust are pointed up, 180 degrees away from follower it presses against
3. Adjust valve to proper clearance
4. Keep track, repeat above until all valves adjusted

This method is foolproof, and avoids biggest risk of doing it wrong, which is messing up timing marks and counting crank rotations. Also much faster. Less stressful.

 

One may think that the oil is leaking from the oil pan. But, prolly the air passing under the car --- while in motion --- is drawing oil from the leaky valve cover down to the pan.

 

And gravity.