Rear Main or Oil Pan

[romeokc10]

Originally Posted by Rockit

My 02 4.4 developed a half dollar sized leak in the same place. It started after the 5 degree weather over the winter and a frozen CCV hose.

The crank case pressure must have blown the rear main seal. I'm so exhausted of throwing money in this car I bought a black rubber door mat. I put it in the driveway and park in the same spot...problem solved $9.99.

LOL!!!!

[romeokc10]

Originally Posted by tecboy99

I'm doing the same thing. I've also been parking in the street. If my mom sees another spot in the driveway, it's not going to be good. Lol

I hear ya, I'm doing the same thing with my 2002 4.6is, parking it on the street, I refuse to park it in my garage or driveway, I got tired of cleaning up the oil stains. I don't want to spend the money to get my Indy to chase down all of the oil leaks as I'm getting rid of it in the next couple of months. As I type this I'm shopping online for X5Ms and Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8s, just can't make up my which one to go with...lol! Other than that it's been behaving pretty good for the last 2 years, and with 225K on the odometer I can't complain, I'm just ready to upgrade.

[o3x5e53]

Your leak doesnt seem that bad. Mine on the other case seem abit worse.
I've worked on cars before(taking out engines etc etc) and this is my first SUV I have bought and i love it.

If this were a sedan i could easily work on this car. The scale of this car is just too big for me. Anyways i sent these pictures into my mechanic saying that my rear main seal is leaking(Knowing that its a big job).. What he said was..

"By the look of your photos it appears the rear main seal is leaking. This may or may not be the case. Oil coming out of this area can be from many different leaks and be very misleading. Most leaks on your car will end up coming out in that area"
"Doing the rear main oil seal is a very big job and we would not recommend doing until a concise check had been done on the exact location of the leak"




Sorry about the size of the pictures.

If i were to do this at the mechanic I was also thinking of changing the torque converter shaft seal everything is out.

Goodluck with yours, $$ in this.

[bcredliner]

Originally Posted by tecboy99

Thanks for the advice, guys! I did a little investigating under the car yesterday. It's not the dipstick tube. The stain on the seem of the bell housing seems to start just below the dipstick tube. But, The connection to the is bone dry. I'll look around the filter housing. I did that gasket and the valve cover around the same time back in the fall. I do recall that I was racing the sun on the oil filter housing job. So, maybe something didn't get seated right. Is that possible?

As mentioned, the source of a small oil leak is hard to find. Gravity takes the oil to a bottom exit but it can be coming from many places above the exit point.

I always start with either cleaning the engine with gunk or spraying any areas that are stained with carb cleaner to remove the stain. Then check after a drive long enough to bring it up to operating temp. Don't always find the source or may take a drive or two but much better chance of locating problem.

[LVP]

I just had mine in for what I thought was the last leaks - vac pump seals and oil pressure switch. Rest of the engine was bone dry EXCEPT that bloody rear main seal. Thankfully my Indy has worked extensively on trannys - he actually did a RMS on a 545 while I was there in about 3h. It was good to watch. I'll schedule mine with the next oil change in 10,000km.

[o3x5e53]

Originally Posted by LVP

I just had mine in for what I thought was the last leaks - vac pump seals and oil pressure switch. Rest of the engine was bone dry EXCEPT that bloody rear main seal. Thankfully my Indy has worked extensively on trannys - he actually did a RMS on a 545 while I was there in about 3h. It was good to watch. I'll schedule mine with the next oil change in 10,000km.

Thats great news, did he lower the whole front subframe to take off the transmission?

[LVP]

On the 545 I don't think he did. Not sure what our x-drive does to complicate this, but he attacked the 545 like a champ. He had a guy helping and that guy was busy the whole time cleaning, prepping while he did the job. I have confidence that it'll be in good hands when I get him to do mine. I mentioned he used to work for a tranny shop. He said no one could touch him when it came to R&R of a transmission. I'm ok not doing the job myself

[EH6TunerDaniel]

I'm not sure if the 3.0 is the same design, but when I did the RMS on my old 4.4, the housing I guess you would call it for the RMS is also the rearmost part of the oil pan mating surface. I haven't had my trans off of my 3.0 yet.

[o3x5e53]

I was thinking the same thing. Upper oil pan gasket. I'll be looking into doing this myself. The subframe will definitely need to be dropped for this work. There's other ways around it, instead of dropping subframe.. Drop the pan abit..cut the gasket at three points.. And gasket seal the areas you cut up.