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Probably a no-brainer to the majority of you, but what gasket would be deteriorating to cause oil leaking here?



Thanks for your help!

1. Crankshaft front seal - most likely
2. sump gasket

Cheers

Thanks!

Camshaft seals possibly also.

Cheers Dan

Most likely the crank seal - its not a gasket. Clean the area thoroughly with degreaser and re examine so see if there is evidence of where it comes from.

Will do.

Picked up a front crank seal from Mania today anyway.

So read that when replacing this particular seal there is a whole bunch of stuff that could/should be done at the same time to save repeating labour... water pump, timing belt, cam seals, head gasket etc.

I might hold off until other things start breaking (which is probably against what some of you might suggest)

I'm going to monitor the leak over the next few weeks to see how fast/slow it is.

Do you know if the timing belt and all that has been done before? How many kms on your motor? Might be worth doing if its close to time...

There is nothing in there that can break that wont leave you at the very least stranded.

Dann

I would have thought that it if the crank seal is leaking and is not going to improve then you replace it. I don't see any logic to waiting at all. If I am not mistaken you can replace the crankshaft seal by removing the crank pulley removing the seal and replacing it without having to touch anything else .. Right / wrong

Removing the crank pulley necessitates removing the intake, the swaybar, the air con and alternator belts, the ignition leads, the cam cover, the top timing cover the middle timing cover, the bottom timing cover and the timing belt. At that stage you might as well remove the cam gears and replace the cam seals, and then undo 8 more bolts and swap the water pump, the pulleys and the timing belt.

The only thing I recall from the purchase two years ago was the rad was replaced. The car has 210k km but hasn't acted up since I've owned it (165k km)

My logic behind waiting and putting up with the leak is that I didn't want to go through all that work for just one seal when I could replace other things too. Problem is I'm not sure how the timing belt, water pump, cam seals or anything else is going. I'll do a visual inspection on what I can and go from there.

Yeah Dann, I've read it's pretty involved and I'm the type of person who wants to change as much of the old stuff for new parts as I can. The problem is finding a free, sunny weekend, as I'm sure what would take some a few hours may take me a day or two.

So yeah ill research on how to best judge the integrity of the various components and based on what I see I may end up doing the whole thing.

Edit: also being a driveway mechanic will make it that much harder haha..

Did you buy the car from someone on this forum? May be there's more info on here about when timing belt & water pump were last done. As a guide Mazda recommend MX5 timing belt & water pump are replaced every 100k kms.

Hmm I don't think he's on the forums, found the car on car sales. Yeah its surpassed the 200k mark so may need changing.