I know this is a common problem with our cars. There are many threads on it. Just never thought it would happen to me! I had my car 5 years (bought new) and thought this was the one problem I could avoid.

I guess when you drive the car every day you don't notice it. But I didn't run my car in almost a month. I turned it on and was looking under the hood. I saw the little line of smoke coming up from the passenger side. It smelled line burned oil. Then it went away after the car warmed up.

I guess I will have it fixed one day. Just not in the mood to bring it to a dealership. I still have more than a year left on the warranty. Please tell me this is normal in any car (not just the crossfire). I am hoping this is a small minor dribble.... that I only notice it because my car sat for too long. What do you think?

 

It is NOT normal in any other car. Well I take that back British Leland with cork gaskets seemed to leak every time I adjusted the valves. I always replace the with a valve adjustment. Modern cars with valve cover gaskets made of quality material run over 200,000 miles without any problems. Our car has a man made gasket so it suffers from human error, quality of work and poor design.

In my opinion, it is just a matter of time before all crossfires suffer this. I have friends with Mercedes SLKs and they have the same problem and they paid alot more for those cars. Unless you like cleaning your engine, take it now and get it fixed. You may want to remove the air cleaner cover and take a look at it from both sides. It has been my experience the drivers side always leaks after a period of time. I check mine every 3 months or so.

 

It is not hard to fix. It takes just a bit of time, new gaskets, and a tube of high temp rtv. I used the leak as a good excuse to pull the valve covers off and paint them to cover up the nasty oxidized finish. However, if you still have the warranty and are okay with the looks of the valve covers, take it in to the shop. I read somewhere that they put new valve covers on the engine rather than fixing your existing ones. Don't hold me to that, but I thought that I read that somewhere on here. In that case they would be new and shiny.

Good luck!

Cheers,
KrzyFast

 

I read that a couple people in here that had the same problem and had it fixed at Chrysler. Then a few months later it was leaking again. Just a bit afraid to have it fixed for 2 reasons...

1. Afraid they will break something else while trying to fix the car (this happens to me everytime it goes to the dealer).

2. Afraid they will fix it and it will start leaking again worse than it is now.

I have had leaky valve cover gaskets on older cars. Had they fixed by professionals and they always leaked afterwards. Not sure why.......... but that was years ago and maybe things have changed since then.