Oil Leak From The Exhaust Manifold

[apenutts]

My 1997 Lexus LX450 starting smoking from the exhaust manifold. I replaced the valve cover gasket but it's still smoking. It's coming from the rear exhaust manifold. I took off the exhaust shield and noticed some oil leaks by the engine block. Will an exhaust manifold gasket repair the issue or do I have an internal engine issue? My LX450 has 198k miles and the oil light comes on every 3,000 miles.

[gw2doc]

i see no one has replied so ill give this a shot, without looking at a diagram or photo of the engine or a snapshot of your oil leaks it sounds like you have a gasket failure of some kind. Depending on WHERE exactly your oil leak is coming from it could be where the cylinder meets the block or where the head meets the cylinder (head gasket) although if your head gasket were going bad but you werent having any oil/coolant mix, then that means you have a piston ring going bad to because oil would be creeping into the cylinder, and then leaking out of the gasket hole and onto the ehaust manifold.

are you having any other performance issues? long hard starting when cold? etc?

the bad news: if your oil leak is somewhere below the point of combustion, south of the head gasket, IMHO you might as well drive it until it blows because if you have to pull the P/C's off for a repair your talking about a COMPLETE engine rebuild.

any chance you can post a picture of what your looking at???