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Catastrophic oil leak

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Nightsmith

New Member
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Location
Chesterfield
Car
2.2cdti 7th gen
Hi all,

Changed the oil and filter on my 2006 Accord 2.2 ictd yesterday. I only had 5L so the level was a little low when I had finished. I mentioned to my father in law this morning that I needed to get some more oil, but he said he had some left over from changing his oil (also an Accord diesel). He offered to top up whilst I took his dog for a walk - smashing!

Later, I was driving on the M-way and I noticed a bit of a blue cloud behind me. I slowed down and bailed off the M-way to take a look. The boot lid of my Tourer was covered in an oily residue, and the underside of the car was absolutely covered too. Under the bonnet, the left hand side of the engine cover had plenty of oil on it, and the left-hand side of the engine in general is covered. There is now no oil showing on the dipstick at all.

My first thoughts - too much oil = blown gasket.
Phoned father in law to ask him how much oil he actually put in - he reckons about 1.5 litres "at a guess" :eek:

So, any suggestions? Where is the oil most likely to have come from? How much of a job to fix it?

I'm meant to be driving to sodding France on Tuesday! Looking like the annual family holiday cancelled at the moment. Absolutely devastated. Daren't tell the wife and kids!

Please help!
 
Not sure if there is any one right answer here.

Really a mechanic should check it out.

I would tell the missus, borrow daddy's car for France since he fubared yours, and get him to check/fix yours while you're away.

Or if you're feeling brave you could top it up and test drive it. If you're lucky all will be well and if you're not it could destroy your engine.
 
Did he tighten up the oil cap properly? Was the oil filter fitted correctly? A member a while back suffered an oil filter failure. He caught it before there was damage done. Hopefully whatever's caused this problem here, it isn't terminal.
 
As said in both of the above already.

Just to clarify, the left hand side is conventionally the front passenger side (UK car) and right hand side is driver side (UK car), but when you say "the left hand side of the engine cover had plenty of oil on it, and the left-hand side of the engine in general is covered" I presume that you mean when standing at the front of the car looking at the engine i.e. driver side

If there isn't any sign of oil coming round the engine from the oil filter on the front, then I think it could be that the oil has been forced out somewhere round the chain cover, which is on the driver side (UK car) of the engine. Is this what you mean by "blown gasket" ? If you're thinking of the head gasket, then I doubt if it's that, but even the chain cover is a big job to remove to renew the seal (which is a "liquid gasket")

The other thing that suggests that it is due to overfilling is the "blue cloud", which suggests that oil has been getting up into the cylinders and being burned in the cylinders. When an engine is overfilled, the crankshaft hits the oil in the sump and turns it into a froth, and it gets drawn up into the cylinders and burned. No mega problem of itself, but the fact that the oil becomes a froth means that the oil galleries would get starved. I also think that the oil will get forced out somewhere at the chain cover.

But, the engine and the chain cover seal might be ok, all you can do is refill it and see what happens, also get it to the nearest garage where they have equipment to test the oil pressure (this is done by removing the oil pressure switch and attaching an oil pressure gauge there).

btw the oil capacities for the N22A1 engine are

Engine overhaul - 6.5 litres

Oil change, including filter - 5.9 litres

Oil change, without filter - 5.5 litres

So if you put in 5 litres and he put in another 1.5 litres then that's a good 0.5 litres too much.
 
Thanks for the replies folks. Cleaned the mess this morning and topped up with oil. Started up and a nice river of oil flowed from the oil filter. The o ring that sits between the filter housing and block was bulging out, suggesting that the increased pressure was released through this point.
Just tried slackening off the filter and retightening but there was still a small leak with engine running. I¹m off to get a new o ring shortly. In the meantime I've topped the oil up again so I can leave it standing to see if there are any leaks elsewhere.
Fingers crossed!
 
so the "blue cloud" must have been a "brown cloud" of oil mist ?


i.e. are you sure that the "workman" who fitted the filter didn't crimp and squash the o-ring ?
 
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