I've sprung a leak! Oil is coming out at a rate of a drop per second with about 3 quarts of oil in the engine and the engine running. It's not the drain plug or the oil filter. It's somewhere ABOVE the oil filter. Could be a cracked dipstick tube. What else could be the culprit?

 

I had the dipstick tube break off on my 2004 Elantra. I just JB welded it back on and it worked perfectly (no leaks) until I sold it 4 years later.

 

It was the oil pressure sensor. It rusted out and oil was leaking around the sensor. So, if the sensor was leaking, there wasn't much oil pressure, yet the oil light never came on. How low does the pressure need to go before the sensor kicks in? Zero?

 

I don't know, but mine leaked and I had to replace it also.

 

A drop of oil per second probably means it wasn't leaking badly enough to reduce the lower the pressure significantly IMO. I don't know what the actual threshold for the warning light is though.