Help! My 84 3.2L is bleeding...
 

I have an 84 3.2L Euro Spec car. Today I was driving away from the fast food drive-thru, and there was a slight dip in the road where the driveway meets the pavement. As a result, my front end scraped the asphalt, but it didn't seem too bad at the time.

After I got home, a couple hours later I noticed some liquid under the front end. I thought maybe it was water from an a/c condenser or something, but when I put my fingers in it, it definitely seemed like motor oil.

I looked under the car and there is a metal grate/protective cover with oil hoses running into it. The oil leak is coming from there. As an interesting note, the metal protective grate does not seem to be deformed or damaged (not that I can see). So I am curious as to how what was inside got damaged and is now leaking oil. But it apparently is so my main goal right now is to find out what this is and get a ballpark idea of how much work it will be to fix.

I haven't worked on my car in a long time so I am not sure what this cooler does? I've worked on the lines and the cooler on the right side/wheel well before though.

Can anyone tell me what this cooler does and if it is most likely to be the cooler leaking and not the hoses? If it is the cooler, could a radiator shop most likely fix the leak? If not how much does this part run (used/new)?

Thanks in advance for any help. Greatly appreciated. (I did a quick search just now but was unsuccessful in finding anything specific to this problem....)

That is oil from the A/C system. You probably jarred things enough to cause a failure at one of the connections(?).

Car is fine to drive, don't tell the EPA about this.... :)

That's about all I can say.

slodave, thanks! your reply is much appreciated. I'm very slow as I haven't worked on the car in a long time. I was thinking to myself it couldn't be another auxiliary oil cooler. Now I recall there is the evaporator thing in the engine lid and this one in front. I've never worked on the a/c system before so that is why I didn't recognize it.

I was told to run my a/c periodically even if I don't drive the car to prevent the seals from drying out. I assume the same thing will happen if I don't get this a/c problem fixed right away?

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I guess I'll take it in to the a/c shop for an estimate....

Wow, that was a short thread.

I removed my A/C a few years ago, hoses as well. I'm sure someone else will chime in and let you know.

If it is bad enough to leak oil, it is bad enough to loose freon. The protective grate comes off, take a look and see. If you want your ac to work, you will likely have to fix it.

That's your front condenser. The one attached to your engine lid is your rear condenser. The evaporator is in the smuggler's box.