my engine constantly leaks oil and i have NO idea where its coming from.. PLEASE HELP

 

Have you ventured underneath the car or popped the hood to take a look?

There are many places the 7's leak oil.

Engine oil dye works great! You might want to take the car to a service facility to check it out.

Both my RX-7's leaked oil when I purchased them. The '84 GS 12A was leaking from the rear main seal and from the front tranny seal. My '85 SE 13B was leaking from the oil cooler.

Mike

 

Degrease the whole engine bay with castrol degreaser. You will be able to see it better that way.

 

i just bought some dye for it. i washed it all down ad pooped ope the hood. i even crawled underneath and gave it a peek but i still could find the source

 

I think they all leak. John gave some good advice. Go buy some degreaser clean it up, drive it and you will see the leak. Most of the oil pans leak, the oil cooler and lines or behive as apporopriate may leak.

 

Yeah, the oil pan design and gasket are ****!

 

In order to see the oil dye you have to have a black light or something like it, thats's the only way the dye will appear.

 

Put some Bardahl engine oil stop leak and smoke, about $4.00 for a 16 oz bottle. Works wonders.

Ray

 

Do you see any oil puddling up near the top of the engine next to the distribtor? If you see it in the area where the "12A" is stamped, you could be looking at the infamous "o" ring leak...

 

Here are a few questions for you. How long have you had the car and how fast does it leak?

 

I have the o-ring leak, more of an annoyance than anything, at this point that is.

 

I thought the infamous O-ring leak was usually under the beehive oil cooler where it attaches, but when oil pools on the front housing (near the distributor as he said) was a dowel pin leak. Is this right? Also, isnt a dowel pin leak much more serious?

 

A leak is a leak. O ring and dowel pin leak are one in the same.

Just watch your level and you'll be fine.


You'll have to pull the engine apart to fix it.

 

ive had my car for about a year and go through about half a qaurt a week or so. theres pools around where u put oil in. where it says Mazda. i think it might be coming from sumwhere else, but im not sure. wat exactly was that oil stop leak ray was talking about?? do u think it would work for me?

 

It probably will if the problem is that the O ring seals are getting old and drying up, but I would look around for a more obvious and fixable problem, like the O rings on the oil cooler. But if you are getting a little pool of oil up by the 12A logo on the engine block, it is probably the dowel O rings and these need to be fixed with an engine rebuild.

The oil leak stuff softens the rubber O rings and makes them seal better. I used it in my 84 GSL for the last 40,000 miles, putting in a bottle with each oil change (use 20-50W oil for your oil changes, this also helps). It cut my leak from a half quart between fill ups, a steady drip-drip-drip on the driveway after the engine was turned off, to almost nothing. It also cuts down on the start up smoke. I'm not the only one who has reported similar results with their 12As and it's an inexpensive alternative to engine rebuilding.

The Bardahl stuff is the No Smoke plus Stop Leak, the one in the lower right hand corner on this website:

http://www.bardahl.com/mods/gallery...p?categoryid=32

Let us know if it works!

Ray

 

So did it start working within 500 miles or did you see the leak slow down after a bottle or two or more?

This Bardahl link should work....

 

It started working immediately (like with the first 200 miles), but this might have been partly due to the heavier 20-50W oil. Then it progressively got better, by 500 miles it had pretty much stopped but it slowly got better even after that, so I still add a bottle with each oil change.

 

take the bottom skid plate off the car. Look at your oil cooler line inlet. Look all around it, most of the time the inlet has a hairline split. Its very hard to see and you'd think that i wouldn't leak as much as it does but it will leak alot! If you have hairline crack then its going to be bad times. Very hard to fix and get it to stop leaking without spending some cash.

 

ok i got sum of the engine stop leak ****.. and from wat im lokin at right now its workin which makes me REALLY happy. no more puddle by the 12A logo. atleast not yet. but ill ya posted if it gets any better, or worse.

 

hey where can you get that bardahl crap?! can you get it from anywhere? like auto zone or some parts store?

:AA:

 

is the bardahl stuff like the lucas oil stabilizer? Or does it mostly just cut down on leaks? I think I might try that out.

 

I got two bottles for a 1000 mile experiment...this will be great if this works for me, too....

 

hold on, let me get this straigt, so you use the bardahl stuff and 20-50w oil? with that and your leak should go away gradually...correct.?

one other question, were do you get this stuff?! can you get it from the auto parts store? like auto zone or something like that? thanks to whoever answers these questions for me...

:AA:

 

I got mine from Pep Boys....

 

Yes, the leak just might go away, gradually or even faster. Mine did. I got my Bardahl stuff at WalMart, there's another product by GoldenEagle that pretty much works the same way, but I haven't been able to find it lately so I switched to Bardahl. About $4.00 a 16 oz bottle, don't get the cheaper thin stuff, you want something about the viscosity of mollasses. Let us know how it works, if we can get enough data we might be able to publish it.

Ray