When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I have an 09' Corvette that I just found an oil leak on and I wanted to see if I could get some advice on.
From what I can see, it looks like the oil is not coming from anywhere higher than the oil pan gasket. This leads me to believe that it is, in fact, the gasket itself leaking.
The car has just over 50k miles on it and it does not get driven every day, or at all during winter.
2020 Corvette of the Year Finalist (track prepared)
2019 C6 of Year Winner (track prepared)
Originally Posted by jet8300
Hi all,
I have an 09' Corvette that I just found an oil leak on and I wanted to see if I could get some advice on.
From what I can see, it looks like the oil is not coming from anywhere higher than the oil pan gasket. This leads me to believe that it is, in fact, the gasket itself leaking.
The car has just over 50k miles on it and it does not get driven every day, or at all during winter.
What am I in for, here?
Oil leaks can be a massive PITA because you can swear it's coming from one place only to find you were way off base.
What I'd do is get the area cleaned up as best you can using engine degreaser and/or brake cleaner and then add some UV dye to the oil and run it for a while to try and pinpoint the source of the leak.
Here's some of the possible causes you're looking at in terms of fixing it:
- loose oil pan bolts, simple fix but not likely the cause
- oil pan gasket, more likely and much harder to fix since the front cradle needs to be dropped to replace it
- front timing cover seal, quite possible as the oil all seems to be located towards the front but to change it requires almost the same labor as a cam swap
Could be as simple as re-torquing the oil pan bolts. I'd use some Simple Green to clean the areas. Re-torque the bolts and then see if you still have a leak.
Like Sub said, need to find the leak first. From there you know what you are up against. And if it is a front main seal, do it right and include the harmonic balancer (if OEM) in the replacement (at the very least).
Could be as simple as re-torquing the oil pan bolts. I'd use some Simple Green to clean the areas. Re-torque the bolts and then see if you still have a leak.
Oil leak
