doctormdds

Several months ago, I bought my mother a 1998 Acura 2.5 TL. I found the car on eBay and bought it sight unseen. While this is uncharacteristic of me, the car was in excellent shape, actually nicer than I expected. I drove the carf 650 miles home without incident. However, after a few days, I noticed that it was leaving a quarter size spot of oil on the driveway daily. This really disturbed me and I had some difficulty determining where the oil leak was coming from. Corresponcence with an Acura tech in this group taught me three common areas for the 2.5 TL to leak oil. I was told the O-ring under the distributor, the head cover gasket and the oil filter base O-ring were common oil leaks with the 2.5 TL. While I intended to fix these myself, a friend of mine is a veteran GM mechanic and he offered to do it for me. He changed the head cover gasket along with the spark plug seals and the figure 8 shaped O-ring between the oil filter adapter and the engine block. He told me the old O-ring was flat and brittle. He also told me this was a chore to change as it's tight in there and he has skint knuckles to prove it! Anyway, after over a week, there is no longer any oil dripping from the car. He did not change the O-ring under the distributor as he said it didn't look like it was leaking. If you have an oil leak make sure you check the side of the block beneath the oil filter. This appears to be a common area for an oil leak with the 2.5. The part was less than $5 but changing it out appears to be a chore. I hope this helps someone pinpoint an oil leak in their 2.5. By the way, I'm told that earlier year models had oil cooler lines attatched to the oil filter adapter which makes the job a little harder.