Oil leaking from bell housing and end of oil pan.

[m3boost]

Hi,

I'm having some oil drop from where the o2 bracket is which is right at the end of the oil pan and the start on the 6mt bell housing. Rod bearings were done 20k miles ago (ssr performance) so I hope it's not the oil pan gasket but it seems like it is.

I cleaned it up and drove around and new oil has reappeared at the same spot confirming it's either rear main seal which I don't think but can't be sure or it's the oil pan gasket.

[dpaul]

I had a similar symptom - made the guess that it was the oil pan gasket, in part because like you, I had replaced the rod bearings a few thousand miles before. Nope, it was the rear main seal.

Good luck. I don't think there's a reliable way to distinguish those two possibilities

[tbuck]

This is a problem that applies to just about all cars, and in all cases it is very hard to determine since seeing behind the flywheel is nearly impossible in most cases. Your only shot here is possibly a borescope if there is an access cover and if space allows. If you can get passed the flywheel then maybe you can see an oil trail up the back of the engine. I am not certain about this in an E9x, but in general there is not enough clearance between flywheel and bellhousing.

[m3boost]

Update: redid the oil pan gasket (bolts are steel not aluminum as in other posts so I wasted $100 there lol) and still had the leak. Tightened down the pan a little more and it completely stopped.

Best part of this was swapping the motor mounts that had 20k miles from previous rb service. The manual shift from 1-2 doesn’t lock out as it did before. If you have a sc 6 speed car this should be changed every 10k miles. The driver side mount was crooked from the sc weight on the driver side of the engine.

[tdott]

Yikes those sealers in a bottle can cause a huge mess through the system. Good luck with that, those quick fixes are never the proper long term solution.

Expect your oil cooler to clog up.