This morning, as I was parking in the garage at work, I noticed a sort of burning rubber/plastic smell. Because I had only detected it during the last minute of the trip, I figured it was some ambient aroma from the garage or the thoroughfare it abuts.
At lunch, I again noticed the smell while I was in a different part of town. After parking, I saw a trail of brown drips tracing the path my car had just driven and a fairly sizable pool of oil under the front of my car even though it had been parked for no more than two minutes.
So, it seems I have a fast (very fast?) oil leak. Obviously, there are plenty of places where the leak might originate, but do these symptoms suggest any candidates as more likely than others? To recap:
[ul]
[li]a fast leak or brown fluid,[/li][li]burning smell,[/li][li]no smoke (at least none that I saw from turning my head back and looking out the rear window while driving), and[/li][li]no warning lights on the instrument cluster.[/li][/ul]
I probably also should point out that last August I had to replace the head gasket.* Could this have any bearing on my current automotive malaise?
1 - Oil.
2 - Oil burning.
3 - Oil burning won’t cause smoke to come out your exhaust, it’ll come out of the engine bay.
4 - Wait until your oil gets low enough.
Pop the hood and check the head gasket. You’ll probably see small pools of oil somewhere.
Did you get the oil changed recently? The “technicians” working at the quick lube places are known to on occasion not sufficiently tighten the drain plug or oil filter or leave the old filter gasket stuck to the engine block, all of which could lead to a sudden fast leak.
If you’ve got oil leaking, dropping onto something hot (like an exhaust manifold) and subsequently creating smoke it’s more than likely leaking from the top of the engine (vs the oil pan). If we are talking about a traditional OHV (overhead valve) engine, I’d check out the valve covers. Of course the leak and the smoke could be totally unrelated. If they are, however start poking around anywhere/everywhere above the exhaust manifold.
Where in relation to the front and back of the engine is the puddle?
Also, make sure to check the oil level in your engine before heading out, you don’t want to run low or out, that could turn a minor repair into a major one.
Thanks for the pointers. I brought it into the garage; they tell me it was some perforations in the oil pressure switch. Is that consistent with the symptoms I observed (the holes were fairly small, after all, pinholes really) – in the garage, there was a pool of oil about one foot in diameter after only a couple minutes of running the engine. I suppose if the oil were under pressure, that much could leak through a small hole in a short amount of time. Am I just being too literal about the name of the defective part though?
The oil pressure switch, also called an oil sending unit or oil sender, sends a signal to the oil pressure gauge or oil pressure warning light. It is indeed in contact with oil under pressure, and thus when it leaks it often leaks vigorously, as you have seen. Note that whether or not it performs its electrical function is independent of whether or not it’s leaking.
The oil is indeed under pressure. At start up it may be as high as 50 psi (give or take), idling at operating temperature in the area of 25 psi and at RPM maybe 40-45.
Guessing your user name is your location? In places that have winter,* oil pressure (significantly) over 100 psi is not uncommon at startup, especially if the owner didn’t heed the temperature vs. viscosity recomendations in the manual.
To the OP: the oil pressure switch could definatly be the source of the leak, and it is among the cheapest of possibilities to fix, both in terms of parts and labor. count your blessings.
*I was raised in Denver. The first time we visited my Dad’s uncle in San Diego, we marveled over the fact that he had tomato plants that were several years old.
The colder temps certainly would increase the oild pressure, especially at start-up. I grew up in Chicago, but having lived out here in (bankrupt) Fruit and Nut Land for the last 30 years or so, I’ve been accustomed to winter being defined as cloudy and below 50 degrees.