Just bought the car, and new to 4th Gen Camaros. I will be taking the top end of engine down for blown head gasket. There is a pretty big oil leak from the front of motor. When looking from underneath it's coming from around the balancer distributor area. While I have this enging down for the head gasket, this would be agreat time to address the oil leak.

What are the possibilities, and can they be addressed with motor in. I figured worse case scenario would be front main seal.

Please advise. Keep in mind I have delt with the new type ignition on the front. What am I in for here with this repair.

Thanks!!

 

It is more that likely from the Intake manifold gasket leaking down. I know mine had one and when I put a new gasket on when I did a cam swap that took care of it. I know many others have/had the same problem. Good luck!

 

Either intake, wp drive shaft seal in timing cover, crank shaft/balancer hub seal in timing cover, or front pan gasket to timing cover seal.

Thats the order from top down, so determine at what level the front of the motor starts getting wet with oil and go from there.

All of which can be replaced with motor in car.

Since the intake is coming off anyway for the heads, see if that fixes it..if not then the other things can be fixed without disturbing the intake again.

 

I just went through all this. In my experience the water pump seal is the most prone to leaking. Search the board and find the right way to install it. It is a double lip seal and really easy to F up during install. Make a tool out of a high lighter pen casing. Works great. The optispark and crank seal need to be installed DRY. All three can be done in the vehicle.

 

My money would be on the water pump drive shaft seal. When I got my car out of storage and started working on it, I soon discovered that seal was leaking like a ****.

 

No gasket on the front of the intake; there are 2 intake gaskets that only cover the port area and a bead of RTV is used to seal the front and rear of the intake.

As stated above, the most likely source of your oil leak is the water pump drive seal.