I have a slow oil leak on the front of the engine. I tried to pinpoint it but I haven't had much luck yet. It seems to be dripping onto the passenger side cv axle and is evenly distributed from there. I think the source is somewhere under the timing cover. The leak is too far back to be the crank seal and I have no fresh oil around the crankshaft. When taking the timing belt cover off I discovered oil on the inside of the top and middle timing belt cover, I cant get the lower part out, not sure if I first need to remove the engine mount or of I just yank on it. I can feel oil on it too though. There is also oil on top of the engine around the spark plug wire on cylinder 1. It is dark out now but I will try to clean it up as good as I can and get some dye tomorrow. Hopefully that will help me.
What is around there that is prone to leak and how much hassle is it to fix it? Cam seal? Valve gasket. Head gasket? (I don't seem to have a coolant leak and I seem to have good oil pressure. Compression on all cylinders is good too.) I thought it comes from the little pulley under the exhaust cam but turns out that is the water pump so as far as I know it cant leak oil.
Any advice is very welcome!

Edit:
It is worse than I thought. I ran the engine with the timing cover off and the timing belt is so loose it almost jumps. I didn't cause any damage, the engine is still running smooth and quiet but I decided to ground the car and do a full timing belt/tensioner/pulleys/waterpump job on it. Sadly my plan of running it with dye to find the leak is kinda spoiled. Again, any help and advice for this job is very much appreciated.

 

I remove my 2000 s40 engine, change timing belt and cam gaskets. I would say with a 100%, it's your front cam gaskets.

 

I ordered a full kit of timing belt, all pulleys, tensioner, front and rear cam gaskets crank gasket, water pump and gasket and vvt solenoid gasket. That should take care of anything that can possibly leak.

 

I have the same car with an oil leak some where under the TB cover. Let me know if this fixes your problem, because I have been leaking toward the cam gaskets being the problem but wanted to get a better idea before I jump into replacing theses. Thanks and good luck.

 

Hey Lucaspanic. You find that leak yet? I have similar issue on my 2000 S40.