Out of the blue my fiancée's '97 intrepid begins pouring oil out of the front of the engine. the car has 180,000 miles on it so it is well around worn. The only issues we've had so far with it have been the thermostat giving out, and it does leak a small amount of coolant over time. it does not seem like the coolant is mixing with oil. While the engine is running I can underneath the car I can see a small stream pouring onto the ground directly below the front part of the engine on towards the drivers side. I noticed a stream running along near the oil pressure switch. The oil pressure switch was in very poor condition and covered in oil, so I unbolted the alternator, removed the oil filter and replaced that it. That did not help. Upon putting everything back together oil is still pouring down that side of the engine while the car is on. The new oil pressure switch does is still clean after this. the leak seems to be coming from the lower driver side part of the engine. I notice there is a large pipe of sorts coming out from the bottom this part of the engine. This may be where it's leaking from. Any suggestions or information would be very helpful because I am stumped.

 

The large pipe you see is a coolant pipe and should never be leaking oil. If the oil pressure switch and oil filter are not the ones leaking and the leak is high on the side then I would bet your timing cover gasket has failed. You will need to remove the crank pulley and all the accessories off the front and drop the oil pan then you can pop the timing cover off. Unfortunately you will also need to drain some coolant and you might as well do an oil change with the pan being dropped. With the timing cover off its also a decent time to inspect the timing chain and replace the oil and coolant pumps that are mounted on the cover. The other items you might want to check are the front crankshaft seal and the oil pan gasket, both of those will show a leak much lower on the engine. If you can show a picture of this leak it would actually help quite a bit. HTH