Oil leaking from head gasket??

Hi everyone!

I hope that I am posting this question in the correct area and it was not answered somewhere else... I have a 2000 Tacoma (90,000 miles) with the 3rz motor and it recently has developed an oil leak and I thought I would pick your brains about it.

Recently I have noticed that on the passenger side of the block right towards the front (between the water pump and the exhaust manifold, more or less) I notice what appears to be oil seepage all the way down the side of the block. It seems to start right between the block and the head because there is no oil on the head at all. It does not seem to be profuse or anything, but it is damp. The truck has great compression and runs very strong. Are there oil passages that run through that area from the block to the head? Could my head gasket be going bad or could it be something else? Is it possible that the gasket can leak out the side like that or could it be from the timing area. Which is more likely?

The only thing that I can say about it is that I have in the past 5000 miles pulled a 4 wheeler trailer on the freeway a few times. I was not beating the thing, but I'm sure the head pressures where up there . It did great though.

Thanks so much for your input!

 

Anyone ever heard of this or knows if there are oil passages in that area?????

 

It was leaking oil out the side of the head gasket? Your newer 2.7?

 

No it definatly seems to be a leak. Its not pumping out enough to drip or anything, it just seems to be pushing out enough to make the front pasenger side of the motor saturated from the head gasket down. I took the truck to the car wash about 3 weaks ago and washed the block up and now it looks to be saturated again. Are there oil passages on the front pasengers side of the head that would cause this? I know there are other things there as well like the timing chain tensioner, do those have gaskets?

Thanks!

 

Well I will do some more looking to make sure... I thought maybe it could be coolant as well due to the fact that the radiator hose goes into the head right above that area. If it truly was leaking from the head gasket is there anything else that I could do to fix it or would i just have to change the gasket? Could the head bolts be a little loose or anything like that?

 

Well I'll look at it some more tonight to make sure its not coming from the valve cover or coolant, but Im pretty sure the head gasket is going.. Thanks so much for the help.

 

Op what did you discover on ur problem?