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I noticed a lot of oil stuck to the transmission/engine mating area on the Civic I just bought. Was hoping it was just a worn out cylinder head plug. Inspected today while running the engine at idle and I don't see any oil coming from the plug. There's no oil sitting down in the little recess below it either. So, watching it at idle, I started to notice some running oil a little below that. Wiped it down, and could see a good bit of oil streaming down the mating surface of the transmission/engine. Photo for reference:
The black lines are not a shadow. That's straight oil. Now, what's interesting is while looking at this leak, I noticed that the transmission mounting bolt right there was slightly backed out. Looked further down and saw another backed out a bit. Looking at that vin tag in the photo, it doesn't match up with my car, so I'm assuming the transmission was swapped at some point. I tightened both those bolts snug and re-wiped that area down. Noticed the leak was reduced dramatically. Is it possible for oil to leak because the transmission mounting bolts are loose? I'm just crossing my fingers it's not a head-gasket. (It doesn't seem to over-heat at all) I'm absolutely going to go through and make sure all the transmission bolts are tight, but is there anything else I should look for as a source for the leak? Hopefully tightening the bolts didn't just direct the leak somewhere else. Thanks!
