Leaky engine oil

[kevin7898]

I have 227000 km on my aveo and when I let it idle it leaks oil, in about 6 hours it dropped about a liter of oil onto the highway rest area, but at highway speeds not a drop is lost, it has always had fully synthetic oil in it with the high mileage filters from fram, any ideas on where it may be coming from?

[Daox]

You're gonna have to poke your head under the hood and see where it is going.

[avguy]

You're gonna have to poke your head under the hood and see where it is going.

+1
I assume you've already eliminated the 2 obvious and happy ones - drain bolt and filter. Either one of those being loose could drop a pile of oil. Next might be the oil pan gasket. Another common one on our cars is the valve cover gasket - I just did mine after it had been leaking for quite a while. But neither one of those gaskets is likely to be losing anywhere close to the amount of oil you're describing. After all of those "easy" ones have been eliminated, then come the usual suspects, which are almost always a few steps up the $$ ladder
Unless the drip has already been located, I will put down a few sheets of newspaper to "catch" the entire area, and then check the paper frequently with a drop or flashlight. Once you have the drip zeroed-in, the source can hopefully be located from either under the hood or getting under the (raised) car. If the source is still not clear, it may help to clean oil/dirt from everything in that neighborhood, including the entire oil pan, and as far up as you can go. If doing all of that still fails to find the source of the leak, then a dye test will be required to find it. That's a lot of oil to be losing, so best to get it figured out pronto. Good luck with it!

[kevin7898]

yeah my next step is to lift the car onto jack stands and wash it off, but that will have to wait as 15 hour work days don't leave time for car repairs. and i just changed the oil, and put in a new filter, and torqued it down.