Ok fellas here we go....... 86 Camaro Iroc 305 FI..... I have had a really bad oil leak since i bought her a few weeks ago... I can smell it burning on the exhaust and when I get on it hard the smell gets worse and when stopped it smokes bed from oil dripping on the exhaust pipe...Its not smoking out of the tailpipe. Ive cleaned down the engine and cannot tell exactly where the leak is... it appears to be mostly caked up on lower passenger side around where the head meets the block... I was terrified that it might be a blown head gasket but from what im reading in the search... not likely..... VC gaskets appear ok... Ive changed the oil pressure unit b/c the gauge wasnt reading... that works fine now... please help me.... the burning on the exhaust is really getting embarrassing and annoying now....

Check the china wall where the head, intake manifold, and block all meet in the back corner.

Did it leak before you replaced the OP sender?

yes its leaked like a mofo since day one

Sounds like the china wall to me. Try cleaning all the caked up stuff off so you can can get a better idea of where its coming from.

Can someone tell me what the China wall is? I a have a similar problem on my 87 Firebird.

It's where the front and back of the intake meets the block. It's a notorious leak spot on SBCs.

Pull one of the spark plugs out and see if there's oil on it? If there is, then feel around the hole to see if oil is making it's way out of the spark plug hole. If that's the case, then it's time for a compression check to see if your oil rings are bad or if you need to take those heads of for a trip to your local machine shop.

hope this helps, but probably a month ago i had to rebuild my th350..after all that was done and had the car back running i had the same problem..oil leaking all over on the passenger side..all over the starter, everywhere, would blow back under the car and smoke like hell when i would stop it was leaking on the headers smoke rolling from under the hood, the hole nine yards..me and my ol man searched high and low and finally found out that under the header in the back on the passenger side right above the starter there was a bolt for one of the oil ports that was loose. check that, its in the back corner above the starter..its the last oil port on that side in the back..you really have to look real good for it.

86eyerok thats a bad lookin machine you got there

thanks man..its a beast.

any update? having similiar problem

sorry its been a while on this one fellas.... i found the leak to be crapped out VC gaskets... i replaced with new edelbrock valve covers and new edelbrock gaskets.. worked like a charm for about 3 weeks and guess what.... the SOB is leaking again..... same place... can anyone tell me WTF is wrong?...lol... i used rtv with the gaskets and didnt overtighten but its doing it once again...

pullled my v/c's off yday and didnt see anything wrong with the gasket. Put back on and cleaned up all the caked up stuff on the block. Will looking under the car after awhile to see if that stuff comes back. Changed the oil was i was under there and will see how fast im burning or loosen oil.


Anyone had their heads redone that could possibly chime in and let me know what im up against here. thanks

Any progress on this?

Had exact same problem, I thought the main seal was leaking. Pulled the engine for a swap, at the back of the block, on the passager side is a port that oil will leak from. It is hard to see but I am sure people will chime in on what it is and what its for.

if its all over the front passenger side of the engine bay a likely candidate is
next to the fuel pump on the front of the motor, there are 2 bolt holes that "should" have bracketry bolted to them, your 86 probably still uses all the seperated brackets rather than aluminum combo ones right? if so the smog pump bracket should be bolted there..... the aluminum brackets also bolt there

going on a limb i'll say the pump and bracket is gone.. which is fine,

but the top hole goes through the block. stick a short bolt in it and clean it up i'll guess the leak is gone.

i chased that same sort of leak for a while, i changed valve cover gaskets, and the front seal before my stupidity was pointed out to me

I hope that advice helps coryprine. I've had a similar problem on my 87 Firebird, and now that you mention about bolts missing from the block, I've just remembered that a nonth or so ago I changed my starter motor for one of the mini types. I therefore didn't refit the starter support bracket from the original unit (which bolts into the block). Do you think that this could be causing my problem?

no that hole is blind and would probably be to a water passage if it werent

i found a pic that shows what im talking about so there is no confusion..

you can see the bolt head just to the right of the fuel line, if there isnt something there it WILL leak oil.

Ah ok, the smoke from mine appears to be coming from further back down the rocker cover in the area of the dipstick. Its NOT from the dipstick, and the engine isn't pressurising the crankcase at all. It looks to me like its the rocker cover gasket, as when you stand and watch, it appears almost like something intermitently is dripping onto the exhaust manifold. I have the standard exhaust manifold, so its difficult to see. Nothing drips onto the ground when the cars been standing though.

After reading on here that people have changed them and its made no difference, I was interested to see what else it could be.

do you have the bolt in place that i mentioned? and showed pic of?

The bolt you mention is at the front of the block, next to the fuel line, betweenthe fuel pump and the crankshaft pulley right? My car has all the original bracketry for the smog pump etc still fitted, I think the bolt is there. The smoke I see doesnt come from the front of the exhaust, its from the top of the exhaust manifold near the dipstick area. THats why I think its the rocker cover gasket.

OK, update on my leak. I took the rocker covers off at the weekend. What a PITA to get to!! Smog pump off, smog metal tubing/hoses off, alternator off, aircon pump off, heater hoses....

Anyway I found that on the passenger side, a section of the gasket about halfway along the rocker at the bottom was completely burnt dried out and crumbly, unlike the rest of the gasket which was still nice and rubbery.

When I lifted the passenger rocker cover off, it became apparent that the little heatshield for the spark plug wires (further along the rocker towards the firewall) had been trapped between the rocker cover and the gasket when whoever put them back on last time fitted them. The burnt bit of gasket was slightly further forward than this, but it must have had something to do with it.

I changed the other side too, but that one was fine.

I've been driving it for a few days now, and no sign of any smoke yet. Hopefully that's fixed it. Judging by the state of the gasket, it must have been doing it for a while, and seeing as how any smoke would have been sucked straight into the heater air intake, would explain why my wife always complains that I stink of fumes when I come in from driving the car (even though I couldn't really smell it).

One final thing, I managed to get all the vacum pipes and wires back on, except I have one 2-way connector with two female spade connectors in it, in the area of the aircon pump that I can't figure out where it came from. It has a green and black wire going to it. I thought it came from the aircon pump, but I put the connector back onto that, and I've spent ages trying to find where the one that I missed is.

Can anyone give me any ideas????

possibly for the pressure switch on the upper ac line, near the "can" on the that line can't think of its name right now

dont think you would have had to disconnect that one tho

The can on my car is on the drivers side of the engine bay near the firewall. The connector I can't find a socket for is on the other side of the engine at the front near the aircon pump. It has to be within 6-8 inches of the pump because of where it comes out of the loom. Its long enough to go to the carb, aircon pump, power steering pump (not that that has connections as far as I know), but not long enough to go to the alternator.

I'll try and get a pic later.

a pic would probably help, i just realized you are across the pond. i suppose the car may be quite different to suit the area

My car came over with a US serviceman stationed over here, so I doubt its much different to yours. THey were never sold over here or anything.

I'll get a picture later though. Thanks.

OK here are a couple of pictures of the connector I can't find a home for. You can see it on the last picture, just by the intake for the air filter.

A/C compressor clutch

yep, it will plug in just behind the pulley on the front of the ac compressor not sure where around its circumference exactly

Thanks, I knew it had to be round there somewhere. I thought it came from the AC pump, but I forgot to have a close look around it until I bolted it all back together. I tried looking all around it, but obviously I didn't look closeley enough.

Here are a couple of pictures of my rocker gasket. Sorry the quality isn't that great.

One other thing you guys maybe able to advise me on: When I had everything off the egine to do the gaskets, I considered leaving off the air injection stuff when I put it back together. I've read a lot of fairly heated discussion on here about whether you should or shouldn't interfere with it.

I think its a little different for you guys in the US with your emissions testing. Over here as far as I know the emissions test for cars rior to about 1989 is much less stringent (unless its belching smoke), and I think I could remove the air injection components without any problems with our annual test. I'm no expert on emissions, but sureley if you have a car emitting gasses out of the tailpipe, injecting air into the exhaust to "reduce" the emissions doesn't reduce the "bad" gasses, it just increases the overall volume of gas passing out of the pipe, making the "bad" gasses a smaller percentage (or ppm) of the overall volume?

I think I read that you take off the pump and black box at the top passenger side of the engine with the associated rubber tubing, and cap off the metal pipes leading to the exhaust manifold. Would I be right in thinking that you'd also just tie the electrical connectors out of the way, and that's about it? What happens to the metal pipe runing round the back of the engine to the other side? Can that be easily unbolted, or just cut it off?? I couldn't see where it was attached. I had to bend it a little to get it clear of the rocker cover when I removed that, but put it back to where it was afterwards.

My car has a carb, and has already had the cat removed (not by me), so would I get any CEL light up if I disconnected it all?