I'm experiencing an slight oil leak on the left side ( passenger ) of the engine.
When you go under the truck and look up the left side you can see oil smeared from the head on down. I'm not sure if this is oil spill from the fill port or the head gasket.
I took it in for service at a Ford dealer and they tell me it's the head gasket.
Repair cost $3,000.
I change the oil every 3000 miles and need to and a quart in-between changes.
Any ideas on how I can check to see if this is a head gasket problem?
Does the cost of repair sound reasonable?
Should I do nothing. What kind of problems am I looking at down the road?
I'm the original owner. Trucks in great shape. 74k miles.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

I would probably just keep a eye on it and see if it gets worse. 3000.00 bucks is a lot of dough to cough up anyway. I believe I read a Ford TSB on pass side head gasket oil leaks. I believe it had something to do with metal chips from the machining processes getting caught in between the block and gasket causing a leak to form.

 

Yes, it is the head gasket leaking. Many early trucks have had this problem. I had mine fixed under warranty at about 35k miles. a year later it started leaking again. I'm now also at 73k mile and it still leaks. It does not drip on the driveway and i don't need to add oil between my 3-4k mile oil intervals. If you can live with it and it does not get worse then i would leave it alone. start saving for the repair just in tcase though.

 

I just had to have it done on my 03 supercrew - 5.4L. Same thing - oil leak on passenger side - few drops on the ground every day. The Ford dealer found it by using dye. I think they use an ultra violet light to find the dye. It was done under warranty - 32,000 miles. The bill would have been about $1100 according to the statement they gave me when I picked it up. If it happens again - after the warranty, I'll just live with it. I don't think it would have leaked more than a qt. between oil changes.