I was driving home today when suddenly the infamous "no oil pressure" warning popped up in my 2001 T5. I was able to get to an O'reilly parking lot and get her turned off. Upon getting out of the car I noticed a trail of oil leading up to where I had stopped. The passenger side wheel had quite a bit of oil on it and even sprayed down the side of the car a bit. Checked the dipstick and it was bone dry. Grabbed a couple of quarts and dropped in her to get to my sisters house just a couple of blocks away and got her into the garage. Once jacked up I crawled underneath and noticed that there was oil under almost the whole passenger side undercarriage.

I went ahead and grabbed a bottle of brakleen off the shelf and got it as clean as I could so I could try to locate where the oil was leaking from. Started the car and let it run for about 45 seconds revving up to about 3k a couple of times which was enough to make a puddle on the floor about the size of an infant. I then had the wife start the car while I watched to see where it was running from.

What I saw was oil coming out around the base of the crank pulley. My initial thoughts were that the front crankshaft seal had blown. Upon further research I saw a lot of people saying that they will "never" leak as it is part of the oil pump?

Now I am wondering if it could be the camshaft seals??? Unfortunately I am home now and can't just run out and do some poking around to check. I am just looking to see if anybody else has ever had a problem like this and what the cause was.

If the camshaft seals go, would they leak to the extent of draining all of the oil from the engine that quickly or am I looking at something a little more major such as either the crank seal or oil pump?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance!

 

this has happened before .. If you look around there has been Guys that have PCV that are clogged and the pressure will build because of that and the Cam seals will leak and the dip stick will even show signs of oil blow buy..With Oil in the Car. To check the PCV take a rubber glove remove the oil cap and put the glove over it so it air tight,Start the Car .. The glove should NOT blow up.If it does your PCV is clogged and it should be serviced... If this does not help you can remove the timing belt cover and see where the Oil is coming from... GL

 

Read this, my story:
Cam Seals, Front Replacement, 1998 Volvo S70 GLT - Volvo 850 Cam Seal Replacement

 

Thanks guys. I went ahead and ordered new cam seals, PCV system, timing belt kit, and a crank seal from FCP the other day. Parts will be here tomorrow and hopefully my brother in law has all the tools I will need sitting in his garage.

What do you think the odds are that I will need to replace the crankshaft seal? From what I've read it seems like it is unlikely that the crank seal would go.