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P1361/P1362, 2002 Honda Civic, and oil leak treatment
Lately my 2002 Civic 1.7 L has been throwing P1361 and P1362 codes, and it can happen after driving for 30+ minutes or more rarely, starting the car after it's been started/stopped several times in a short period of time. It loses power and goes into limp mode, but after killing the engine and letting it sit, it starts up after 30 minutes or so, and within 15 minutes if I raise the hood. Then it runs without issue for another couple weeks, and you'd never know there's a problem. When the engine is cold, it always starts immediately, but it can be difficult to start when hot.
This is all consistent with what I've read here about others with the same codes. In my case, the problem started very soon after I had the oil changed and had them add a bottle of Bar's Rear Main Seal Repair treatment to deal with a minor oil leak I've had for a while. I'm wondering if this could have anything to do with the sensor starting to malfunction, and if so, whether it's likely to get better over time, or if I were to change the oil again without adding the treatment.
If I were to get this fixed, it wouldn't be much more difficult to fix the oil leak and change the timing belt, right? The leak is obviously all around the gasket and visible when you open the hood and look at the front of the engine. The car only has 92K miles or so on it.
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Re: P1361/P1362, 2002 Honda Civic, and oil leak treatment
Attach a few picks of the oil leak area(s). Most common leaks are the cam cover/cap, valve cover seal, spark plug holes seals, crank seal, rear main seal. I doubt if that oil treatment caused any issues.
Watch the videos in this link related to the CEL codes: https://www.autocodes.com/p1362_honda.html
Remove the coils and look for oil on them. Spark plug hole seals that insert into the valve cover are a common leak source and it causes oil to fill in the spark plug wells.
Re: P1361/P1362, 2002 Honda Civic, and oil leak treatment
Originally Posted by Wankenstein
Attach a few picks of the oil leak area(s).
Here are some photos. In the second one, you can see a couple of leaves in the little depression where oil likes to make a tiny puddle. I've never actually had to add oil between changes, which I do once a year or every 5000 miles or so, whichever comes first. A thousand miles after the last change, it's still half an inch above the top hole on the dipstick, and at worst it's still been between the two. (I guess the leaves got there when I left the hood open on a windy day after the P1361 code stopped me cold.)
Re: P1361/P1362, 2002 Honda Civic, and oil leak treatment
Originally Posted by Colin42
How much oil are you putting in? Definitely looks like it needs a valve cover gasket and cam plug seal
Whatever the oil change place puts in. I've been living with it for a while. I think it started a few years ago when I went in for a conventional oil change on sale and they used full synthetic. I've gone to other places since then and recently found out they use a blend when you ask for conventional, so I brought my own conventional last time.
I'm much more concerned about the P1361 and P1362 codes and only mentioned the leak because of (a) the codes occurring soon after the last oil change and leak seal application and (b) to see if replacing the top dead sensor would make repairing the oil leak and replacing the timing belt easier, because my understanding is that the sensor is hard to get to and requires disassembling the engine such that it would facilitate the other repairs.