Where is This Leak From?
 

I did a valve adjustment and oil change yesterday. Today I was checking up on the oil level and noticed this leak. Where is this coming from? I've searched a bit and it seems the VTEC solenoid might be the culprit. But I'm away from the car right now so I can't check that until later today. Any other suggestions though?

The leak is in front end of the car passenger side.
Attachment 189468

Are you sure that oil is not from the old oil filter when it was removed during the oil change?

Hmmm could be. As the filter dropped in my hand into the oil pan and splashed a little. But this looks kinda' fresh to me, not from yesterday.

Seems like too much oil to be from the vtec solenoid. It almost looks like it is spraying out from somewhere. Take your dry hands and rub them around all of the parts on the engine block above the oil filter and see if you can locate a wet oil source. Then run the engine and look for something spraying oil - maybe the oil filter ?.

Any chance that you remove the oil filter from above the engine bay and it is dropping into a collector pan below - splashing up ?. I've done that a few times.

Did you make sure you got the rubber seal on the old filter off before putting the new filter on? Sometimes it will stick to the engine block.

Two seals on the oil filter=not good.

You mentioned that you did a valve adjustment. Did you torque the five valve cover bolts in a star pattern progressively? I didn't the first time I had my valve cover off and it caused my valve cover to not seal properly and leak at one spot above the VTEC solenoid.

As posted above, it could be from the splash. It could be from the new filter that has two gaskets/improperly tightened. Could be from the removal of the cover if some of the oil dripped down and was not wiped up. Could be from improper torque of cover bolts and not waiting 30 minutes for seal set.
Could be crummy cover gasket.
I would be sure to double check the oil filter to make sure it was not spraying oil. A number of threads on that causing engine fires. If you don't torque it be sure to do the 7/8 turn with a wrench as it can be hard to do by hand.

I wiped it off for now. Went for drive and didn't notice that spot getting more oil. So it could be from the splash.

That I did not do. I already threw out the old filter though. Is there anyway to check this without having to change the oil again?


Haha you bring up another issue that I had. 3 of my valve cover bolts sheared off. Even though I was torquing to spec and following the sequence. It leaked a bit at the beginning but it doesn't seem to me that it would be enough to be the culprit of the leak. As this seems like quite a bit more than how much leaked from the valve cover.

I'm in the process of figuring out a way to extract the sheared bolts but they're pretty deep in the cam holder bolts. So I'm thinking of ordering a new set of the cam holder bolts instead of trying the extract the sheared off bolts from inside them. Not to get side tracked but if anyone has any input on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a picture of the sheared off bolts. Top right and bottom two.
Attachment 189456


unfortunately, I torqued it by hand but I will order the socket for the filter and recheck the torque.

You absolutely need to fix the valve cover bolt issue. You're missing three out of five bolts, and all the missing ones are at the corner where you're seeing the leak.

Get a bolt extractor kit and start working on removing the three sheared bolts. Order five new valve cover bolts.

That is almost guaranteed to be your problem. You can also remove your cam caps and see you you can wiggle those bolts out before you try to extract them and possibly damage the threads on the cam caps.