Hi guys. You're seriously over-worried. Next time you're on the highway, watch for a short dark patch on the road every once in a while. You'll notice there's a dip in the road surface right before that dark spot. The dip causes oil drips to drop off leaking engines and accumulate right after that. To say that a different way, there's hundreds of cars passing by every day with really serious oil leaks, but you don't see them on the side of the road with engine failures. From what you've described, you have nothing more than the common oil seepage that occurs on every engine with the mileage you listed. It's good to be observant, and to check the oil level periodically, but you can sleep well tonight. Engines fail all the time, but not due to the little accumulation you're seeing.
As a side note, you'll notice that most oil dip sticks have not listed "full" and "add" for a long time. That's because engines are designed to be as fuel efficient as possible. One of the many changes is to use low-tension piston rings that develop less friction, but they let a light film of oil sneak by too that gets burned. You won't see that at the tail pipe, but it is quite common for the oil level to go down between changes. Toyota even had an oil reserve tank back in the 1980s on some of their vans. Today dip sticks show, "Min" and "Max". As long as the level is between those two points, there's no need to add. If the level gets below "minimum", there's still a safety margin built in, but on hard corners, the oil could wash to the side and allow air to be sucked up by the oil pump. Over-filling can be just as bad. The oil can reach the spinning crankshaft and get air whipped into it. Air going through the oiling system is the same as no oil to separate the moving parts. My experience has been when the specified amount of oil is put in at an oil change, the level shows up at about 3/4 from "minimum" to "maximum".
If you want to discuss engine problems, the better topic would be the use of variable valve timing. GM and FORD engines have a lot of trouble with that. Chrysler's 3.6L has had very little trouble, but the biggest thing to prevent problems is to keep the oil clean. I have a 3.6L in a 2014 Caravan, and a 5.7L in a 2014 Ram, both using the variable valve timing. The advice I've gotten from local engine rebuilders is to not go by the oil-change gauges on the instrument cluster. Those draw out the recommendations too far, as in up to 10,000 miles. It's true the oils today are much improved, but I still change oil at no more than 5,000 miles. Every manufacturer used to recommend every 3,000 miles, then Ford started trying to make their cost of regular maintenance appear lower than that of their competitors, so they started recommending every 7,500 miles except for "severe" conditions. If you read their requirements carefully, you'd see "severe" included short-trip driving conditions, extended long trips, cold weather, hot weather, dirt roads, heavy loads, to include multiple passengers, etc. In fact, there was no such thing as "non-severe" use. You were guaranteed they could find a reason you should have changed the oil every 3,000 miles.
The problem with dirty oil is tiny particles can develop that make it through the filter, then can plug the small passages that switch oil flow on and off to the variable valve timing components. I don't know that I'd call that an "engine failure" exactly, but it would require a visit to the repair shop. Both power and fuel mileage would be reduced by quite a bit.
To boil this all down, there's no need to worry about the seepage you described. I suspect you would still see the same thing after replacing the crankshaft seal.
Friday, December 5th, 2025 AT 2:54 PM
