Oil leaks out at night/road trip help needed

[SLCPUNK]

Started my road trip two days ago. Car drives great but woke up this morning and found a significant amount of oil under my car. It appears to be leaking near the front towards the driver's side. Today I drove from New Orleans to San Antonio and stopped every 90 minutes or so to check and top off the oil. I almost went through a quart today.

Now I have a three night layover in SA and need to find a shop pronto. The oil continues to leak out when it is parked, so I'm guessing the leak is coming from the bottom of the engine? Does anybody have any ideas of typical leaks from the lower half of this model?

Also if anybody can recommend good indy mechanic in San Antonio that would be awesome.

Thanks.

[mbsickness]

I would first check the level sensor which is on the driver's side of the engine on the side of the oil pan.

[SLCPUNK]

Turned out the dipshit who worked on my car prior to leaving put in the wrong size bolt on the front corner of the valve cover gasket. This allowed the oil to leak all over the place, pooling inside my lower engine cover and leaking down after the car was turned off. The shop (European Auto Works in San Antonio, awesome guys) got the correct bolt and tightened it down. No more leak.

However, I noticed smoke was coming off my muffler when I got back to my folks house, I'm guessing since it was saturated with oil, it may take a while to burn off? Either way, as of now, the area is dry and I see no more leaking under the car. Good news, since I start the second half of my trip tomorrow.

[jc1kz]

that's good news for sure, while on this trip are you keeping track of gas mileage and travel costs? I ask beause I am taking the car to CA this fall and just wanted to know what to expect expense wise....and I hope the rest of your trip is trouble free....

[SLCPUNK]

Thanks, I hope so too!

My MPG seems poor, about 26. I drove across country with this car almost exactly 9 years ago and it got 29. I have some items, but not a heavy load, so I'm not sure why it's that low. I did a lot of work on the car prior to the trip, including new plugs/wires and I don't have a CEL.

My wife's car is a 97 Camry with 225k on the clock and she's getting 33 MPG on this trip. Considering a new Camry gets 35 MPG, that's pretty damn good! I love both cars for different reasons.

Despite this, it is sometimes unnerving when you're really out in the middle of nowhere and think that you're driving two cars that are almost 20 years old each, haha. I will say that no matter how much you keep up on your car, it's still best to do the basics on trips like this. Check the fluid levels, once if not twice a day. If I had just been content with my maintenance, I probably could have done serious damage to my car somewhere between Louisiana and Texas. However that morning I checked fluid levels and looked under the car.