Hello All - I have an oil leak which was present prior to the Manifold/Plenum/valve cover gasket changes. It appears to be coming between the oil pan and a plastic shroud. I took a pic. The plastic shrouds appear to be covering the starter and flywheel. Any ideas? I tried to take out the two bolts to drop the plastic shroud but it looks like it would require dropping the oil pan. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. I can see no indications of a leak topside.

Oil leak between engine and trans is a good indication of a rear main seal leaking. Is this with your 2002 Buick? If so, I don't recall how the seal is installed/removed.

Or...its possibly the oil pan gasket.

Would rear main seal be engine oil or tranny fluid? It is definitely engine oil! And yes it is the 02 Buick. How would I check that??

That was gonna be my next question. Determine if its trans or engine oil. Atta boy!!

Your going to have to pop that plastic cover off somehow. How? Not sure. I've seen different types of covers throughout the years. Once I remove them, I never reinstall them. Thats pretty much the same with everything else in my engine bay.

I'm wondering if that plastic shield is also connected to the trans near the nose of the starter??

It'* a two piece cover, same style as the GP ( I had to replace the GP'* original starter two years ago). Here'* a pic of it:

I've very often seen this leak misdiagnosed as a rear main seal, when in reality it was the rear engine cover gasket. Thing is..you can't really see either until you remove the flex plate. So it'* a close enough diagnosis. However if you go to fix it...I'd suggest having both the rear main crank seal and the rear engine cover seal on hand to save time and effort.

The bolts that hold the rear engine cover on are at a super low torque and have plastic sleeves to align the cover perfectly for the crank seal. The low torque over time loosens up and allows the gasket to leak.

I'm not only the president...I'm also a founding member. =0)

During my last trans swap I took care of this 2-5 drip per night leak.


Here we can see the rear of the engine with the flex and the rear engine cover off. Because we have a one piece crank seal, it doesn't fail often...but it'* a gasket and they can.

Bill, stop scaring people with your expertised experience.

Mike.. I try to contribute at least once a day.

Doing the "no more leak mod" caused me to take a lot longer on that trans swap.

This is awesome detail. Just what I needed! However now with my transmission starting to bang into gear it may be best to play a wait and see. Tranny is not something I can handle...so if it is up in the air it may be best to have them take care of that too?? Looks to be a bear to fix up on jack stands or ramps?