Major oil leak from the rear passenger side

[watchamakalit]

Dexter recently put out a video about this. He sells kits that have all the correct sizes,according to his video. I used a felpro kit on mine and it no longer leaks. 

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

Glad to hear a vote for the Fel-Pro kit.  I'll probably start with that.  

 

Took this pic today, I decided to take a look and a pic of the before.  This is before, but after I cleaned the area and have put maybe 5 miles on the truck.  First step in any of these jobs is cleaning, step 2 is usually figure how what tools are needed.  As the pic shows mine is indeed the non-torx variety.  [@watchamakalit, was yours this bolt style as well?]  FWIW it appears that the leak or at least the notable one is the surface touching the engine, the others don't look wet yet.  I'll still replace all the rings, but from the picture just replacing the big one might actually stop the leak.

 

In my tool prep, I find:

1. 5/8 fits about the same as 16mm.
2. The bolt head looks perfectly find, not rounded off or anything (not yet at least)
3. Neither fits as good as I would like if this is one of the extremely tight ones.
4. The next typical size down from 5/8 {ie 10/16} is 9/16, that's too small.
5. The next typical size down from 16mm is 15mm, that's too small.
6. I kinda doubt this is a 19/32 or a 15.5mm

[hgeranium]

@AnotherOldJeepGuyI just finished the job on my truck with success! (So far) I ended up needing to buy regular box end SAE wrenches for it because I only had metric AND they were all ratcheting wrenches. You are correct in saying that it is a 5/8 or a 16mm. I had to do the double wrench trick with a 5/8 and a 3/4 to break it loose, then swapped to my 16mm ratcheting wrench to get it off completely. The only actual difficult part of this job was getting that bolt loose, which was only exacerbated by the fact that I needed to make a trip to Harbor freight in the middle. 

this was the condition of the o rings. Completely flat and hard as a rock. I couldn’t even see the smallest o ring on the bolt itself, I just happened to know that it was there from doing my research. If I didn’t do research I would’ve had more issues finding it. It totally blended in with the gunk and oil. I impulse bought a set of picks at HF and thank God that I did. They were so difficult to remove even with the picks. The smallest one I ended up just having to cut a piece of it to pull it out.

this is what it looks like after. Good as new. Getting the O-rings in with a bit of the oil that came out was very simple. I also wiped it down more after taking the pictures, just in case some of y’all thought I put it back on dirty. 
 

I idled it for a few minutes and I didn’t see a drop of oil which was a far cry from Sunday. It’s not confirmed to be fixed yet because I still need to drive it around for a while and see if the pressure lets any oil leak out. I cleaned the area around the adapter so I can see if any new seepage forms. 
 

All in all this is a very easy fix. Even if it doesn’t fully solve my problem, it was definitely a huge part of it and it’s something I’ll never have to worry about changing again. Thank you to @Eagle_SX4for pointing me towards this. I honestly didn’t even know the 4.0 had an oil filter adapter and O-rings within it to begin with until he told me lol. Learn something new everyday. It was so dirty down there everything just looks like one part of the block. 

@AnotherOldJeepGuythe only sort of annoying/inconvenient part is getting the adapter aligned. There’s a little rod that sticks out from the block that keeps it oriented a specific way. I just tightened the main bolt without worrying about the adapter until it was snug and you can kind of twist and feel it set in the place, then you can fully tighten it. I would imagine that, if misaligned, quite a bit of oil would come out at startup and shouldn’t be too difficult of a fix to tweak it. 
 

sorry if this is super long and/or has weird formatting issues. I’m typing this on my phone outside before I clean up and put away my tools and it’s hard to gauge how much I’ve written on the phone compared to my computer  

[hgeranium]

I was just in for a major scare after my drive! All seemed well until I pulled back into the complex to park and that's when I smelled the burning oil smell again. Not nearly as potent as last time but I felt my PTSD kick in. I quickly parked and checked under to still see  no leaks! This is the first time I've driven the truck since I brought it home after the whole leak fiasco on Sunday so in hindsight it's pretty stupid of me not to take that into account

 

To confirm that things are OK and the residual oil just needs to burn off, my OFA is still clean as a whistle. I can at least confidently say that I installed the o rings correctly and I don't have any more leaks coming from that area specifically. I need to do a good powerwashing and degreasing like somebody recommended to see how much damage my RMS and/or VCG is causing. It's kind of unfortunate that I will have to give it a few days for the oil to burn off to really be able to smell test if there's any external oil burning on the exhaust again but at least I didn't make anything worse doing this repair

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

Great work @hgeranium!  Glad you got it!  I am not familiar with the two wrench trick, maybe I'll google that one if I can't get it loose with what I have.  I do have a breaker bar, and a neighbor with a bigger breaker bar and I'm hoping that gets it.

 

The pics you included are nice additions to the thread.

 

FWIW replacing the VC gasket was not bad either.  Will take a bit longer than this but fairly straight forward.  I used the Fel-Pro gasket.  The problem I had with that job was the plastic hoses that come out of the top, the smaller one that comes from the back ended up breaking as I was trying to remove it, and the larger one in the front was already cracked so I ended up replacing both to finish the job.  Getting the larger new one in at the VC was pretty tight but with enough persuasion it went in.

 

Just to summarize, your plan was to use Fel-Pro 70301 for the large one, and the other two from the kit you got from Amazon correct, was that how it played out?

[hgeranium]

9 minutes ago, AnotherOldJeepGuy said:

Great work @hgeranium!  Glad you got it!  I am not familiar with the two wrench trick, maybe I'll google that one if I can't get it loose with what I have.  I do have a breaker bar, and a neighbor with a bigger breaker bar and I'm hoping that gets it.

Thank you! And you will absolutely need to use a box end wrench. There is zero room for any sort of ratchet or breaker bar. I tried the breaker bar from the top and from the bottom before I gave up and went to harbor freight. There's just zero clearance, not to mention how little there becomes as you're loosening it. If you were to somehow get a wrench and socket on there, I bet it would get stuck when you back the bolt out enough. So, break it loose with a 5/8 using the 3/4 for leverage, and then finish the rest with the ratcheting wrench (5/8 or 16mm, if you have a RW). It's a long bolt so the RW makes it a lot easier

This is the trick. You need to use a wrench that is about 2 sizes larger than the one you're using to remove the bolt. Getting the orientation is a little strange at least for me especially if the wrenches have a bit of offset (because that will change the direction and orientation of the leverage wrench that you need to have), but I just practiced hooking them up a bunch before I took the bolt off. Holding the 5/8 on the bolt while squirming to get the 3/4 hooked on was kind of annoying but once its on there it won't come loose at all. Even though I know how to do it, I still end up having to practice and watch a video sometimes to do it lol. If that makes me a newbie, so be it. I just tend to overthink little things like this

9 minutes ago, AnotherOldJeepGuy said:

Just to summarize, your plan was to use Fel-Pro 70301 for the large one, and the other two from the kit you got from Amazon correct, was that how it played out?

Yes, I used the FP 70301 for the big boy, then used an o ring kit that used AS568 sizes. 117 for the little o ring on the bolt, and 219 for the intermediate size o ring on the OFA that mates up with the bolt. There was a tiny bit of clearance on the 117 o ring but it didn't seem to be a problem, just in case you notice it when doing the job yourself. 

[watchamakalit]

Mine is a 5/8" hex bolt. And yes they were all torqued by a 900lb gorilla from the factory and wall require major force to break loose. After the bolt is loose its easier than changing your socks. 

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

I think there are a few gorillas in the Dallas Zoo and that's not too far away, might get some help.

 

Picked up the Fel-Pro Kit, hope to try it sometime soon. 

[hgeranium]

9 minutes ago, AnotherOldJeepGuy said:

I think there are a few gorillas in the Dallas Zoo and that's not too far away, might get some help.

 

Picked up the Fel-Pro Kit, hope to try it sometime soon.