oil leaks, 03 VUE FWD V6?

[johnbasler]

anyone else have issues with oil leaks? 03 FWD V6 VUE is less than 3 years old but has 50k miles.

It is leaking from the rear valve cover and possibly at the oil pump seal. Saturn is not willing to do anything about it, and the valve cover gaskets are $86 each!

any ideas?

[burlyvue2]

That sux. How much oil is it going through? Any blue smoke?Can you get a wrench onto the nuts to tighten it up? Mine has 80k now and is still going fine. Hope yours wioll be too!

:us:

[johnbasler]

not burning, but leaking.

leaking right onto the exhaust manifolds, which sucks. pull up to a stoplight and smoke starts rolling out from under the hood.

no good, because you have to pull the intake to replace the valve cover gaskets...

:x

[ssicarman]

Replace the gasket before the smoke turns to flames. Check the aftermarket for parts. May be availible and may be cheaper.

[johnbasler]

Replace the gasket before the smoke turns to flames. Check the aftermarket for parts. May be availible and may be cheaper.

no aftermarket options.

this sucks...

[lefty32]

My 03 VUE V6 got an oil leak before 3 years, but 1,300 miles past the 36K warranty. Despite this being my second Saturn, they were not going to work with me and honor the warranty or at least give me a discount. Saturn said it was a problem around the oil filter and allegedly solved the problem for only $62. A month and a half later the problem still exists and now they said it'd be $444 to replace the valve gasket! I took it to two repair shops and both said they couldn't understand why it'd be that much and one gave me quote around $200, $125 of which was the labor to take off the top of the engine to reach the gasket. I found a gasket on line for a 2003 VUE V6 FWD for less than $45 including shipping at rocketauto.com. Needless to say my dealer is going to get an earful and I will be taking my car elsewhere to have it fixed.

[johnbasler]

My Saturn dealership quoted $575 for the valve cover gasket swap!!! And this was supposedly with the parts at cost. Once i told them that I was going to repair myself, they would not even cut me a break on parts. They wanted $86 and change each. Luckily i have a friend that works at a local dealership and got them for $39 each from Saturn. After all this, they wanted to get me on a 120% markup on parts.

never mind that the labor to do 2 is barely more than doing 1.

I went ahead and replaced them tonight. Actually, the job was not as bad as I had anticipated. Once I got the intake off, I was quite surprised that the valve covers were so loose that the bolts came out by hand. Put it all back together and it is fine now.

Seriously, I am very disappointed. It still gives me an occasional puke of DexCool that I suspect is coming from the water pump. I also think that it is dumb that the intake manifold needs to be removed to change spark plugs on this 3.0L engine.

Between this and the 2 hub assemblies this needs, I am done with Saturn. It has been 1 thing after the next, and I have never had this kind of experience with any of the other vehicles I have owned.

[mysaturnvue2]

My 03 Vue AWD V6 is at the dealer as we speak for a leaks at the oil pan. Just went out of warranty 1000 miles back! However this problem started & was first documented 9000 miles back and 2 times since then, prior to now. My new dealer said they will take care of it. Ive got my fingers crossed!!

[mb31]

My 2003 Vue just started leaking from the front valve cover and since it is no longer under warranty, I wanted to replace it myself. To anybody that performed this repair, was it difficult? Also, does anybody know the torque specification for re-installing the cover? Thanks.

[jdmessner]

Saturn should have marketed oil and coolant leaks as standard equipment on the 2002-2003 V-6 vues.

Oil leaks are common. They are also expensive to repair outside of warranty since there are no aftermarket options. My LS2 had the 3.0 litre engine in it. It was at the dealer 3 times for oil leaks. Each time they replaced the valve cover gasket and gave me a free oil change. It would work for about a month, then the oil on the driveway would start to appear again.

It turned out that the mating surface of the rear valve bank was not machined exactly straight. Apparently they had to use alot of RTV goop to seal it when they assembled it.

The fix was to replace the entire valve bank and machine the cylinder head. Luckily it was still under warranty because the fix was priced out at over $2300.00

You have one of three failures. A worn valve cover gasket, a warped valve bank or a warped valve cover. In any case, it's not going to be easy or cheap to repair.

The oil pump seal is another famous place to leaks. There's nothing to do other than replace it.

Good luck! You're going to need it.

[mysaturnvue2]

I had the same issue about a year ago with my '03 VUE AWD V6. If you search back in VUE TECH articles I think it's there. My NEW dealer replaced the gasket on the oil pan and "knock on wood" it still is okay. :)