oil leak

[Cat]

Hi everyone. I have been on here for a while, but this is my first post. I have an 03 with 197,000 miles that I have had for about a year and a half. Great car! I loved the Vibes when they first came out, and I finally bought one to be my daily driver.

I have been noticing some oil residue on the alternator, and the source of the leak is down lower. The oil is getting on the serpentine belt and is flying off on the alternator. The only way to find out where it us leaking will probably be to pull off everything driven by the belt. Is there a gasket somewhere down there that is known to leak? This is not something I would attempt to fix myself, but I do have a good mechanic I can take it to. Otherwise, the car runs great and is doing well for the years and miles.

[Caretaker]

I'm not sure if the first gen has the same issue as the second gen, but with mine, the oil leak was coming from the timing chain cover and is a widely known problem throughout Toyota's 1.8 liter engine lineup. I have seen some writings that the $1 rubber gasket can be replaced without lifting the engine out. My mechanic said otherwise and took it all out. That minor leak dripped down onto all the components you stated. When I asked my mechanic whether I could just live with it, he said no. I trusted him and had him do the whole procedure.

[zbyers]

Welcome to the party. Brownie points for including a picture!

Oil leaks are slightly common on these, especially as the age. In general order of commonality:

1) Valve Cover Gasket
2) Timing Chain Tensioner O-ring
3) Timing Cover
3a) Oil Pan
3b) Crank Seal

3, 3a, and 3b all kinda go together, as you can reseal all of those at once if you do the timing cover. Timing cover reseal can be done in the car (been there done that) but is easier removed. It can be a pricey repair.

if it's on the alternator, i would suspect crank seal, which can be done on it's own.

then of course you have the obvious, oil drain plug, oil filter, and oil pressure sensor.

hopefully that info helps you narrow it down and see what the solution will be.

[Cat]

Thanks for the good information. I will run this by my mechanic and see what he thinks.

[tpollauf]

Hopefully it's not your timing chain cover gasket which is what I'm dealing with .... see my post at: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=46475 Keep us posted as you go through with this repair

[Cat]

I just picked up my car from my mechanic. He replaced the crank seal and serpentine belt, so I hope all is good for a while. Cost was $230, so I don't think that was too bad.

[joatmon]

The serpentine belt isn't very hard, but I would be intimidated by the crank seal job, sound like you got it done for a good price. Hope that solves the leak, let us know

[tpollauf]

I just picked up my car from my mechanic. He replaced the crank seal and serpentine belt, so I hope all is good for a while. Cost was $230, so I don't think that was too bad.

Sounds fair & lets hope that the ONLY leak was from the oil crank seal. Too many times there are either multiple leaks OR what seems like the real leak DON'T get fixed and you still end up with a leak Put some time & miles on the Vibe and let us know if the project was a success.

In my case I am now just starting to re-drive my 2004 Vibe GT (leg injury had me sidelined for 5 weeks ... clutch leg) after my buddy fixed my oil leak. In fact the car was finished May 13 and I had my leg accident on May 12. Wife had to drive the Vibe home

[FacilityMaintenance]

Oil leaks are slightly common on these, especially as the age. In general order of commonality:

1) Valve Cover Gasket
2) Timing Chain Tensioner O-ring
3) Timing Cover
3a) Oil Pan
3b) Crank Seal

Good stuff. I'm tracking down an oil leak that drips off the oil drain bolt, but seems to originiate much higher up. The furthest up I can find wet oil is here.... right rear upper motor mount? Does this suggest valve cover gasket?




I know there could be multiple points of leakage. I just did an oil change (Fram FE3600 and Mobil1 5w30 high milage) and torqued drain bolt to 27ft/lbs but it was dripping before that and the pan is wet above the drain bolt.

[FacilityMaintenance]

I watched a video which says the serpentine belt could be throwing oil up high on the engine, so that doesn't necesarrily mean it's coming from that high.
A toyota shop foreman in the coments said all Toyota motors eventually leak from the 3 way joint of the block/head/timing cover.

I watched another video which shows the valve cover gasket of a 1zz-fe motor with no oil around it. My 2zz-ge valve cover gasket looks like this... some oil, but not wet. Maybe thrown?


Then I watched this video on a hack to easily remove the 2zz-ge timing chain tensioner by grinding away some of the mount https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBGXppO4pQ8



I stuck my phone behind the engine and was able to get this pic. Does it seem like it could be just the tensioner gasket? or does the wet oil to the left and above indicate timing cover gasket?

The tensioner gasket seems like a relatively easy DIY fix. Is there any way to rule out the timing chain cover gasket, as that would require engine removal and not sure I want to dive that deep? Should I degrease and wash the engine and then watch for where new oil appears?

[FacilityMaintenance]

OK, I just found tpollauf's thread from a few years ago
viewtopic.php?p=521527#p521527

That thread has pics on where to clean to identify if it's timing chain tensioner or cover gasket, but from looking at those pics I seem to already know it's the timing chain cover gasket where the block and head meet.

Here's the original video I watched where the Toyota shop foreman says this in the 4th comment down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KCMj75rJ1g

It's not from the power steering pump being over tightened. It's the 3 way joint of the block/head/timing cover that is a natural seem where they all meet. A bead of ThreeBond 1184 laid in those seems (bottom end girddle too) before installing the cover/gasket will seal it for as long as that engine remains running. All Toyota engines leak from this spot...super common. Coming from a Toyota Shop Foreman & MDT. Done many...

And here's the vid of actually changing the timing chain cover gasket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4621r66Btug
At 13:32 he takes the cover off and the gasket is basically dry rotted/outgassed, so I wonder if a stop-leak addative that is supposed to soften up gaskets would help any? at 14:42 he does the crank seal but he doesn't do the oil pan or the tensioner O-ring. O-ring he says he can do whenever with it still in the car though.

Here's a vid of 2zzlow doing the timing chain cover with the engine still in the car, but it's a celica GT-S which seems to give a lot more clearance. 2nd comment down is someone saying they used this vid to do it on an 03 Matrix XRS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFo0uLvyOdM

Somehow I think I could do it if I could get the engine out, but it might be wishfull thinking. Somewhere I also read that blowby could be responsible for causing this leak. Would a compression leak down test show that? Motor has 215k. I'm not a mechanic and the most I've done are things like tires, brakes, spark plugs, idler pully, tensioner pully, alternator and installed a manual timing chain tensioner on a motorcycle(funny how on motorcycles they're referred to as cam chains but on cars they're called timing chains) but I am pretty mechanically inclined and have some tools. Not a cherry picker though! Might go the in-car route?

[andrewclaus]

First, clean everything. Then start checking below the flange of the tensioner. Feel for a drip every chance you get after driving. Chances are that's it, and that's easy to fix.

[joatmon]

I watched a video which says the serpentine belt could be throwing oil up high on the engine, so that doesn't necesarrily mean it's coming from that high.

If it was oil being thrown or blown up from a lower leak, wouldn't there be some oil splash on the firewall as well?

I had valve cover gasket leaks in both of my 1ZZs. Hope that's the issue with yours, as its the easiest to address

[FacilityMaintenance]

Thanks guiys, I'm going to clean everytthing and make sure that's where it's coming from. A lot of oil back there but only drips a 3-4 drops a day it seems, so must be leaking for a while. I don't see any on the serpentine belt but maybe it gets slung off and dries. Dunno. Don't see any oil on the firewall, but everything I do see it on is right in line with the serpentine belt. What really sucks is, I noticed some clutch slip right after I bought the car when trying to take off likea jackrabbit. Thought maybe clutch was almost gone since car's at 215k, but now I suspect oil is getting on the clutch plates!

Aaaaaand, P0420 popped up last night! Things keep getting better and better. Thought it was a diamond in the rough but didn't realize how rough.

[Daisy]

I woke up to find a huge oil mess under our 113kmi 2004 Vibe this morning. I put it up on jackstands, and thankfully the issue was that the oil filter was not tight. My 17 year-old son drove the car a few miles with it leaking, so hopefully we didn't cause too much damage. When we filled the oil- iot took 2.5Q to get it back up to the top hole on the dipstick. Just adding a datapoint in case someone searches for this topic.

[Daisy]

I'm not sure how much traffic this site gets (I'm new here) but I'm replying to my own post- in case it helps anyone else in the future.

After running the car low on oil (due to an oil filter that loosened itself) I tightened the filter and filled the oil to full. It seems to be running fine- and has the the past few weeks. My 17 year-old son (he's the primary driver of the car) told me that the oil pressure warning light came on once since that time, and he parked the car immediately and called me to tell me. I was worried about what that might mean (and if it had anything to do with having been operated significantly low on oil) so I tried hooking up a friend's sophisticated scan tool to see if I could read live data from the OBC to determine what the oil pressure is at various RPMs. I couldn't figure it out, and do not know if it is possible, but it is easy enough to simply unthread the oil pressure sender and thread in an oil pressure gauge, so that is what I did. This car was showing 20psi at idle and 50psi at 3,000 RPM. The spec showed a 20-22psi idle, and up to 80 psi at higher RPM, so I was relieved to see that the car is functioning normally.

Does anyone happen to know if a capable scan tool ran show live data on this platform? I'd like to be able to check this intermittently without making a mess.

[tpollauf]

Glad your son parked the car immediately after the oil light came on. Can't comment on any type of reader BUT definitely keep a sample of the current oil (6months or so from now) when you do your next oil change and send it off to a lab for an oil analysis. They will tell you if there was any internal damage/wear done to the engine. Blackrock in Ft Wayne Indiana is who a lot of us here use. Keep us posted

[Daisy]

Blackstone Labs... yes- I think I'll do that in a few weeks.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[joatmon]

Does anyone happen to know if a capable scan tool ran show live data on this platform? I'd like to be able to check this intermittently without making a mess.

Can't claim to be an authoritative source, happy to be wrong, but:

Supposedly there are various ODBII tools that can display oil pressure live data, but I think the problem is that its not supported in your 04 Vibe.

All I can find is this pic from the 04 Matrix manual, which shows the oil pressure switch as a basic open/closed switch, which is pretty common in cars.

osw.jpg (3.09 KiB) Viewed 2708 times

to ODBII display oil pressure, you'd need a pressure sensor that can read variable pressure, and a car computer (ECM) that can accept and interpret the sensor, and from what I can tell, the 04 Vibe has neither.