Unexplained Oil Leak in Car

Worztron

Hi.

My father has a 97 VW car. Just before Christmas during the big freeze, we had drove to the local shopping center. When I got out of the car, there was a small trail of oil leading from the car. We decided to do the shopping quickly and hope to get home before all the oil was drained. After about 45 minutes we got back to the car, I went to the front and saw a pool of oil below the engine. The hood was opened and there was oil splashed around inside around the engine. The oil was checked (but misread). A tow away truck was phoned and got us to a local garage. It turned out after that the car would have been safe to drive as there was sufficient oil in the car. The garage removed oil from a belt (may have been a timing belt) and greased some ball bearings. They found nothing else wrong with the car. The car is fine now.

The people at the garage cannot explain this. Can anyone explain this? I reckon it was something to do with the freezing icy weather.

crosshair1

Hmm, looking into my crystal ball...
This is a 1.0 to 1.6 petrol engine right?
You are correct that the freezing weather is the cause, the breather assembly is mounted on the rear of the engine block and contains moisture that collects in the housing and in this case has frozen.
In turn this has caused the engine breather system to block thus pushing the oil up the dipstick tube and this drips onto the crankshaft pulley.

Havent seen this until the week before christmas this year and had 3 in (golf,polo,ibiza)

Worztron

crosshair1 wrote: »

Hmm, looking into my crystal ball...
This is a 1.0 to 1.6 petrol engine right?
You are correct that the freezing weather is the cause, the breather assembly is mounted on the rear of the engine block and contains moisture that collects in the housing and in this case has frozen.
In turn this has caused the engine breather system to block thus pushing the oil up the dipstick tube and this drips onto the crankshaft pulley.

Havent seen this until the week before christmas this year and had 3 in (golf,polo,ibiza)

Thank you crosshair1. So there is nothing wrong with my car?

crosshair1

Probably ok until we have similar weather again.
The workshop really should have examined the breather.
In my cases as I couldn't have replacement breather housings in time
I had to run through hot water and then degreaser

Worztron

crosshair1 wrote: »

This is a 1.0 to 1.6 petrol engine right?

It is a 1.4 (1400 liter) petrol engine.

Cheers crosshair1, for clearing that up.