portia888

My 84 has a leaking oil pan or other gasket that is dripping onto the area under the car where the exhaust pipe looks like a Y. Smoke comes up through the car into the cabin on the passenger side. I need to drive about 80 miles to get home and repair. Can I do this or could this leak and burning oil cause a fire?

pnbell

It is likely the back of your cam tower gasket leaking on the exhaust. Many 944s leak here and I have never heard of a fire as a result of oil leaked on exhaust... so I would say 80 miles is fine to drive.
You might have luck just tightening the bolts- but don't break or strip them....

M758

depends on how much oil leak and smoke. Don't let it run low on oil either.

krystar

if reallly desperate, fab a exhaust/oil shield from like home heating duct sheet aluminum or something heh.

Mighty Shilling

I've been driving with oil dripping on my exhaust for a while now. it smells like ***, but I've never had a fire (knocking on wood). That'll be fixed in 2 weeks.

plumbum

tough call...always a gamble... many cars leak on the exhaust with no issues other than smoke and smell but there is always that chance...I would say you should be fine but ultimatly it is your call

Crackership

I just fixed this on my car... bolts were loose, poured oil on the exhaust, smelled bad and smoked.

Got a 10mm wrench around? It's worth a shot and it may well solve the problem.

Hollywood D

It will smell really bad but I doubt it will cause a fire.

portia888

Tracked the leak to rear of engine area. Not exactly sure where it is but rear main seal is likely. Thanks for all the comments. Cleaning the built up oil to see if that stops the smoke in the short run. Now I have to fix driver window so the smoke doesnt knock me out.

krystar

rear pass side could be rear cam seal (very likely, ez to fix/rtv), rear balance shaft seal (almost impossible to really fix, but rtv-able), rear main seal (impossible to fix unless u remove engine or transaxle)

944Ross

I had a bad RMS and lived with it for a year until I did the clutch at the same time. What seems like a lot of oil is really not that much, I had to add two quarts over a period of a year (maybe 6k miles). It blew back onto the cat converter and made some smoke, not really visible but I could smell it. If you are actually getting visible smoke into the cabin, I think you're leaking forward of the RMS, most likely the rear balance shaft seal.

hopps

I wish I would have known this sooner haha. I just took apart the entire top of my engine, to find out that the oil leaking onto my exhaust wasn't from a bad cam gasket, but because 2 bolts were missing from the back of the cam tower. Oh well, needed to be done.

And I was running the car and going to the AutoX with oil leaking onto my exhaust for a good while You should be fine as long as it isn't a stream of oil leaking out. I didn't get around to fixing mine sooner because it was always just a couple drops and nothing too serious until recently.

kombatrok

I've been driving the N/A with oil leaking from the pan on the exhaust for a while now... its finally getting bad enough I may have to do something about it. I thought about trying to put a shield or something on the exhaust to keep it from smoking... Never came up with an easy way to do it though