Oil leak

[Leonard124]

I was driving home the other day on the highway and all of a sudden started smelling oïl. The cabin filled up with blue smoke and was seeing smoke come out the back. Opened the hood and there was oïl dripping down everywhere.

Seems the oïl was coming from the front of the engine on the exhaust side.
Ripped out everything last night and these are the observations.

- timing belt was relatively dry
- timing belt cover (the yellow one) was all oily on the inside
- exhaust camshaft sprocket was wet on the backside-----intake was dry
- cambox to head seemed pretty dry
- everything from the headgasket downwards ia all wet (on the front of the engine and on the front part of the exhaust side)

I had to place a cardboard under the car as the whole underside is wet.

I removed the exhaust camshaft sprocket and noticed that the camshaft seal had moved slightly.
This would explain the wet area behind the camshaft sprocket.
Removed the seal and did not see any visible damage.

Question is...would a leaky camshaft seal cause such a big leak?
I am worried that something else might be causing this leak (headgasket?)

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

[RRoller123]

Camshaft seal would do this, also check the Cam Box gasket itself. If that were leaking, it might fling oil everywhere as well. Maybe Oil Filler cap leaking? The seal gets dry and they get loose and leak. On a 1.8L engine, the oil fill is up there where you are describing.

[Leonard124]

OK...didn't think a camshaft seal would loose so much oïl.

Car is FI...oil filler is at rear.

Cambox gaskets are 1 year old.
Hard to tell if they are good, but the seam between cambox and head seemed dry

Will a leaking headgasket do this?
Car was running fine and no traces of oïl in coolant or vice versa!

Thanks

[geospider]

A while back I had the head down at a machine shop. they also put the cam boxes on and set the lash. did good work.
BUT... the exhaust cam seal was loose enough (slid right out with no pulling) and was slinging oil all over. also a leak at the cam box to head. They used some sealer with the gasket. After reading and talking with a couple vendors: that is not what you want with these motors.
I installed a new seal and upgraded cam box gaskets and all has been dry. reset valve lash too
I would look at these first
geo

[aj81spider]

It may be that you have a leak somewhere else, but a leaky camshaft seal will do that. It doesn't have to leak a huge amount. The oil migrates to the back of the cam pulley and then gets flung everywhere. It's very efficient, so a small amount of oil creates a giant mess. I had that problem and replacing the seal solved it.

[Leonard124]

Well I removed the camshaft seal and it definitely moved. It actually came out a little and was rubbing on the camshaft sprocket. Since this is the first time that I had such an issue, I went ahead and replaced the other one as well even though it only had a couple of thousand kilometers on it.
Interestingly, the new camshaft seals that I picked up from my local Fiat vendor were .005 thousands of an inch bigger in diameter. Maybe the other ones were too loose in the bores?
Also changed the cambox gasket...but that one was fine and did not see any damage on it.

I really am surprised that the camshaft seal could have done such a mess.
There was oil everywhere in the engine bay!

Thank you for all your suggestions and will keep you posted if this did the trick