The Nissan Path

Ok, lets get this right out of the way first... Yeah. oops. Ok, let's move on.

The coolant bypass hose failed in my 1996 Pathy (122K miles) last week and steamed up a storm while coming home. In reading this forum, I see that this is a known issue and elected to take your advice and replace the timing belt, water pump, cam and crank seals, and a few other incidentals. In removing the cam seal from the left bank (pass side) part of the seal fell back into the little opening behind it. The cam seal was toast about 30K miles ago is my guess. It was hard and brittle. Before I even removed the seal there was oil everywhere under both the upper and lower time covers. It was ALLLLLLLLLL over the place! Dripping down past the water pump and onto the ground. The source was pretty obvious, this cam seal which was no longer a seal at all, more like a badly worn hockey puck. It took some effort to remove it, which is kind of amazing considering both the front and rear of the thing were swimming in oil. Oddly, the right side which looked fine came off in one piece and with no fuss at all. In the process part the seal disintegrated into chunks. In my (failed) attempts to retrieve these pieces, one was pushed back into what I think is the oil return on the left hand side, as you look at it from the front. So I guess my question is, where does this oil path lead and is it large enough to accommodate a piece of cam seal that is about 1/4 inch long but maybe 1/8th of an inch wide. I assume this ends up in the oil pan?

Also, is this return accessible by taking the valve cover off? If not, is the only way to get this piece of seal out taking the head off?

Thanks for your help.

I wouldn't worry about it. It will likely drop down to the oil pan where it will lie on the bottom or get stuck to the oil pickup screen. It shouldn't cause any damage to the engine.

Thanks for the reply. I took your advice and just left it in there. On start up there was a problem, but I later figured out it was unrelated and I was able to fix the issue, but it sure had me on edge! After a day of driving around town i can report no problems. Oil pressure is good to go! Thanks again.

I love it when a plan comes together... good work!