Tracing a leak when the car lives on the street
In the Victorian and Edwardian streets around Wrythe Green, and on the narrower roads near the village, cars park nose to tail on both sides. You rarely get the same length of kerb twice, which means you almost never see your own drips. Most people here find out a different way: a smell of hot oil after a drive, a level that has dropped at a service, or a dark patch noticed in passing that may or may not have been left by the car parked there yesterday.
Where the oil lands is a weak clue in any case. Airflow under a moving car pushes oil rearwards, and once it reaches a sump seam or a gearbox casing it tracks along and falls from the lowest point it can find, which can be two feet from the actual seal. There is a reason beyond your own car to take it seriously as well: oil washed off the tarmac here goes into the surface water drains, and this part of the Wandle catchment runs down past Grove Park and the Honeywood Museum.
Being five minutes away makes diagnosis straightforward. We steam clean the engine and underside, put a measured dose of ultraviolet dye in the sump and let you keep driving your normal village and Beeches routes for a few days, then look again with a UV lamp and an inspection camera that reaches behind the timing cover. You get written findings naming the source, with photographs if you want them, and a price for that specific repair.
Sometimes the answer is to leave it alone. A seep that leaves a surface oily but never forms a drop, on a car whose dipstick does not move, can reasonably be watched rather than chased, particularly if the repair means removing a gearbox. We will mark the level, record exactly where it is coming from and look again at your next service. Where it does need doing, the repair carries our 3-month workmanship warranty.