so i'm on my way home from work today, and I'm about 1 1/2 miles down the road, and I look in my rearview mirror and see this column of bluish/whi smoke blowing out the back of my car. I immediately pull to the side of the road, and glance down at my guages...everything is normal, oil pressure around 60. I shut the car off, pop the hood, and see the entire left side of my engine, from about halfway down the block on down, covered in oil, and oil is gushing out faster than if you let the plug out of the pan. Only problem is, i can't locate where its all coming from. oil cap is on tight...oil filter, while it has some oil on it, is screwed on tight and doesn't appear to be leaking...the drain plug to the pan isin (couldn't reach that far under to see if it was screwed in tight, but there's no way it'd be halfway up the engine if it was the plug only). Its at a buddys shop right now, and i'm hoping its nothing serious. Any guesses??? After i got in the car to move it back a little out of the way of traffic, i turned the key and saw that the oil pressure was 0, as in all the oil was gone in a matter of seconds. Is there an oil hose on these engines about halfway down the block? I have the 3.8

 

Valvel cover loose maybe? Is you're dip stick for the oil on that side?

 

Sounds stupid but I have seen this several times:

Even though you say the filter is tight you should remove it and make sure that you dont have the old gasket from the old oilfilter still on there. Sometimes when you do an oil change the rubber gasket from the old filter will stay behind when you pull the filter off, then when you thread the new filter on you have two gaskets and dont get a proper seal around the filter. This will cause severe leaking around the filter- maybe not immediatly but eventually. I have seen this several times- worth pulling the filter to make sure that you onlyhave one gasket making a good seal- especially since you said you saw oil on\around the filter.

 

This is true. You should also check the valve covers as stated above.

 

got my car back yesterday. It turned out to be the oil sending unit. he had to replace the oil switch too, but it only cost me 120 bucks for everything including new oil ha. i too thought that it was the filter, but the oil came out so fast and in such a short amount of time, that unless the filter had a huge gap in the seal, i couldn't see how it could be the problem. anyway, i'm back on the road again, so i'm happy.

i replaced the engine a year ago, with a junkyard engine that had "36,000" miles on it. how could it be possible that the oil sending unit would go bad that fast? could it be that before this last oil change it was a good 6-8000 miles and i hadn't changed the oil?

 

This was @ your buddys shop. Dude, loose him as a friend. The part costs $35. add $10 for oil that he gets prob for$0.50 a quart. a little teflon tape @ $1.00 a roll. The part is right in front of the engine above the ac compressor below the alt.The only thing you need to remove is a two wire clip that attaches to the end of the sending unit. This is a a 5 min job, no $#ittin. I had my unit leak. I took it off by hand and replaced it in the parking lot where I pulled over. Your buddy charged you WAY TOO MUCH.

 

ya, i did think it a little steep. i was pretty sure i could change it myself, but i wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with it. i saw the new part, looks nice above the new filter. oil switch and oil sending unit = same thing??