oil leak

That is a bit worrying as the transaxle (gearbox and diff) is housed in a substantial alloy or aluminium casing. If its the engine sump, which is more likely as its sheet metal, the leak will be blacker or brown idicating engine sump oil.

See which oil it is. Diff and gearbox oil in automatics is Dexron and maywell be red. If its manual, you're looking for honey coloured and-or red.

As to the motor, it will be, depending on how long the last oil-change was, honey coloured to brown, then black with a distinctive petrolly-burnt smell. I'd be taking a gander under there myself to see what cooking!

best of luck''Jason

helpfor92camry wrote: "My daugher drove my car off the road today and scraped the underneath of the car." =============================== Go under the car and find where it scraped - that should lead you right to the source. Most everything is painted black - so you should be able to see new evidence of bare metal scratch marks. Whenever I scrape the undercarriage, I go under there and touch up with Rustoleum satin black to avoid rust developing - and usually it is the cross member which sort of shields the oil and transmission pans - but if she drove _over_ an obstruction without stopping you need to look further.

Don't drive the car any more than absolutely necessary until you find the leak source. You could have a problem that will increase while driving to the point it will cause a catastrophic failure. On the other hand it's probably something minor, but why take a chance. The other posts should give you the all the info you need to find the source. HTH, davidj92

I doubt it is either, but you cant tell without getting under it or get it on a lift pronto.