Please help me find and get a repair estimate for this oil leak

[William516]

I draw the line on engine repairs that require a lot of mechanical skills, I will be the first to admit this so I'm trying to get an idea of what this leak could be coming from. The Jeep liberty has almost 90K miles on it. She has run perfectly fine and have had no problems. I did a full oil change on the truck not to long ago and I did spill some oil on it and I noticed a smell of burning oil when driving with my wife. When we came to the light after an our drive we noticed smoke coming from what I thought was the passenger side of the engine bay. I chalked it up to oil burning off.

The oil I placed into the truck was synthetic oil. I decided to crawl up under the jeep and look for myself and what I saw shocked me. First it looked as if it has had a small leak for awhile. The O2 sensor mounted onto the exhaust manifold had oil on the wiring. It also had oil that had gotten onto the exhaust piping. I did a search and tried to wipe it up and pin point the leak. The leak is very slow or only happening at highway speeds, I have never seen a drop on the driveway where it sits everyday.

It looks like the oil is coming from a bad gasket that is located below the engine valve cover. It almost looks like the gasket was not put on right from the start or broke and split in two. What im not sure is what gasket it is. I don't know if it is the head gasket or passenger side valve cover. Sorry but once again I don't usually get into an engine repair of this magnitude. My understanding is that a head gasket from past experience on 4cyl would leak to foamy oil and over temp. I do not see any of this. RPM's and all seem fine I have never seen the truck overheat. I have never found antifreeze or other fluids on the driveway.

Hopefully my photos will upload and you can get an idea of what im looking at.

Can someone please help me figure out what is wrong with this poor truck and how much a repair should cost if it was taken to a reputable repair shop.

Thanks for any help.

Bill

(If the photos show up here is what im looking at. The photos were taken from the passenger side. I crawled under where the passenger door would be. The O2 sensor is located in the photo. If I follow the exhaust piping back into the engine and then look straight up. I can see the metal shine of the valve cover and then it looks like the lower part of this assembly has the remaining part of the gasket slipping out of it.)

I hope im wrong about it being a head gasket!!

 

[Gennybro]

Since the valve cover gasket is the cheapest and easiest of potential problems, I would go ahead and change that, they cost about 20 dollars. I believe it is the valve cover gasket, and it is a pretty easy fix. Remove the valve cover and clean mateing surfaces squeaky clean. Apply thin coat of oil to gasket, this helps it seat and seal properly. Put new gasket on and tighten down valve cover. When tightening down the valve cover bolts,go in the sequence of one across from each other. Not in a straight line,per say.
Go back and forth to each bolt tell all is secured evenly and firmly.

 

[flatie46]

If it were me I'd get me a can of engine degreaser and clean the engine the best I could an then run it a bit, keep an eye on it an see if you can see where it comes from. Odds are good if you do have a leak and it's just not where you spilled oil that it is a valve cover gaskett like Gennybro said. Good luck!