Driving to work today, everything going great. I start to notice the smell of burning oil, assumed it was the car in front of me. I drive about another 30 seconds and the oil light starts to flicker on and off. I put the two together and immediately pulled over and shut off the car.
I noticed a small amount of smoke coming from under the hood, I also saw oil all over the right side of the car, completely covering the back passenger tire and all over the trunk (swirling air must have blown it up there). A look into and under the engine shows oil coming from somewhere around the bottom of the engine. Even though the oil filter had no oil dripping from it, I pulled it off to make sure it was not the problem and made sure the seal was still intact. Everything was fine and I put it back on[1]. I was low enough on oil only a few ounces of oil trapped in the filter spilled when I took the filter off.
When my help with supplies arrived, I put some oil in and started the car. I could see a steady stream of oil coming from the front crankshaft seal. The engine sounded fine and I HOPE there is no other internal damage. I would not have done this troubleshooting but I do not trust any dealerships. I want to make sure I would not be hit with a bad oil filter or a leaking oil plug your screwed excuse. If the problem was a filter or something simple, I could fix it right there with no problem.
A call to Hyundai road side service got me a free tow to the newest dealer.
The results? Huge oil leak from the front crankshaft seal caused by a "moving" crankshaft. I was told that the crankshaft and bearings will need replaced along with the seal. Pretty amazing diagnostics for just about 5 minutes on the lift. At least the repairs are under warranty. The car has never dropped or leaked an ounce of oil prior to today. I was less then 3 miles from my house when this happened and there are no signs of any leak prior to that in my driveway. This was immediate failure. Scary. I am not completely on board with the crankshaft diagnosis but since it is under warranty and I have never seen a seal fail that fast, I am not going to have a second opinion done on it.
Since I am at 60K miles, I have a question about the timing belt. I was told that to replace the timing belt during the complete engine disassembly to change the crankshaft, would only be about 1 hour extra charge + parts to replace the timing belt at the same time. I'm no expert on I4 engines but how can you remove the head without taking the belt off anyway? In all fairness, they did say they would call me back with the exact figures later.
[1] Funny side note on the oil filter. I took this groups general advice and stopped using Fram and Super Tech oil filters, the filter on my car now is the first Purolator I've bought in years. Luckily that was not the problem. Statistical analysis aside, I would never have bought another one!