2TR-FE Valve cover oil leak, where do you think this oil is coming from?

Most of the oil is in the valley where my coil packs are. It's starting to seep up to the top of the valve cover and down the sides. I have not been spilling oil on the valve cover when adding. The only thing I can think of is the valve cover bolts down in that valley, maybe oil is seeping up through them. I made sure they were tight and pulled a couple out, are they supposed to have little gaskets or anything? It's not coming through the spark plug holes, those little rubber gasket did their job and kept the oil from going down the hole.

Here are some pictures.

 

Is there a PCV hose, or vacuum hose off the the intake, which runs right near there?

 

Probably that oiley stuff dealer or factory sprayed on motor that seeped down in there. Clean it up and see if comes back.

 

My 4cyl was getting a little "gummy" around my coil packs when I changed my spark plugs last month. I haven't cleaned my engine bay like I used to do so I need to start doing that again.

 

There is, but I took a real close look at them and they aren't oily. They aren't the source.

 

did you ever figure out the problem?

my engine started showing signs of a leak, but if it is the valve cover why is the oil only on the TOP of the cover?

http://imgur.com/a/ymAIy

 

Not yet. I wiped it up and am going to keep tabs on it.

 

There's an inner gasket that seals around the spark plugs. You might get away with a retorque - or you might just have to replace the gasket.

Or live with it

 

started thinking that was the problem. gonna go ahead and do the gasket and pcv valve since its only $30 for the parts... I've done a few valve cover gaskets should be pretty straight forward

 

Yep, Piece of cake!

 

I gave the bolts in the little valley there a little something each with a 3/8 ratchet...we'll see.

 

Bump. Any updates on whether that took care of the problem? i am having a similar oil leak on my 09 2.7L @andrew61987

 

I haven't done anything to address it yet except clean it up. It's starting to return but it's not a huge deal for me right now so I'm just living with it. We'll see if it gets worse.

 

Thanks for the quick response!

Im probably going to do the same

 

I am having this exam same issue. Have no clue where it’s coming from. Thought maybe oil cap could be seeping some? PCV valve? The engine has a tilt back, I have oil residue up to the cap. Making me think maybe the cap could be playing a part. 91,000 miles.

 

Another option, if you want to go that route, is to clean the area, drop a little fluorescent dye in your oil (the type made for it, not any fluorescent dye), then in whatever time frame, poke at it with a UV flashlight and see exactly where it's coming from. The dyes themselves have always been reasonably cheap, but now days, with the advent of UV LEDs, the lights/flashlights have come down a LOT - to the point where they're no more expensive than standard flashlights (and sometimes cheaper).

 

I had this issue when I first got my truck back in 2013, and I replaced the valve cover and spark plug tube seals thinking the seaping would stop. While the old gaskets needed to be replaced (they were rock hard), oil was still seaping around the spark plug tube after the new gaskets. So I ended up putting a thin layer of RTV around the spark plug tube on the valve cover, and it has been dry ever since! I don't have a picture, but I can take one if someone wants to see what I did.

 

Update: I made this post in 2016, and in 2020 I changed my valve cover gasket including the inner one with the 4 holes. All the while, the leak has never stopped and continues to this day with approximately the same severity.

In the last year, I have had TWO coil packs fail and in both cases they had a decent amount of oil on at least the upper part of them (the little coil pack gasket seal thing seems to keep oil out of the hole).

I am interested. With my two coil pack failures that I attribute to oil, it's clear I need to do something about this. Question however; do you have oil in the long holes your coil pack slides down into? Mine seem to be dry.

 

No, there was never oil in my spark plug tubes, it was only leaking oil up past the valve cover. I will get picture of what I did soon, as I will be doing the job again (since I now have to replace my timing and balance shaft chains).

 

I don't know if this helps, and perhaps you already did this procedure, but the FSM has a "three-stage" tightening procedure where the center is tightened, then the outer, then the center again.