Front Main Seal

Rubyric

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May 20, 2022
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8
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AZ
My front main seal is beginning to leak pretty good, question is, should I have ut replaced or keep driving it, 2004 rubicon with 83k. Any ideas on replacement cost?
 
Do you mean rear main seal? I'm not aware if 4.0s even have a front main seal.

You're safe to drive it as long as you keep the oil in the engine at a safe level, but the seal really should be replaced. It's a very cheap part but it will take a mechanic a few hours to fix it, as you need to remove the oil pan to get to it.
 
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I think he's referring to the timing cover seal. If so, that requires a fair amount of work from a shop's perspective. Maybe 3-5 hrs of labor? Just a WAG. There's a bunch of might as wells in there that inflates the price.
 
Whatever seal it is, try this before spending any serious $$$ to fix it. Switch to a High Mileage conventional engine oil, like NAPA sells. Valvoline makes all NAPA branded oils.

High Mileage engine oils have restorative additives added that can restore seals so they no longer leak. Especially if it currently has synthetic engine oil in it which seems to more commonly cause such seal problems more than conventionals do. My daily driver BMW lived on synthetic and it developed a major rear-main seal leak and was leaving a real mess on my garage floor every day. After getting a nearly $2k quote to fix it, a BMW forum thread suggested I switch to a High Mileage conventional and damned if it didn't fix it after maybe a week of driving. I wasn't a fan of synthetic engine oils even then but the records said it had gotten nothing but synthetic Castrol before I bought it so I stayed with it... I was really happy changing to the High Mileage conventional fixed that leak!
 
Thank you for your responses, I'm going to Napa today to buy the high mileage oil and change it, I'll report back in a couple weeks.
Thanks
 
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Replaced my RMS by mechanic about a month ago. Still leaked after replaced not as bad. Mechanic will replace it but my truck is down waiting for parts, so tried high mileage a few weeks ago and it slowed leak down to a very minimum drip. Took about a week to slow down.
 
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My front main seal is beginning to leak pretty good, question is, should I have ut replaced or keep driving it, 2004 rubicon with 83k. Any ideas on replacement cost?
reseal.jpg
About $15.00 to restore seals.
 
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There is an additive that is supposed to be the best one out there and has a lot of positive reviews. The name of the company is Titan and I pasted the link below. Check out their page and testimonials before you decide to use any other "stop leak" specific products other than the high mileage oil which is a good idea anyway. Link: https://titansealers.com/Titan_Oil_Stop_Leak/
 
There is an additive that is supposed to be the best one out there and has a lot of positive reviews. The name of the company is Titan and I pasted the link below. Check out their page and testimonials before you decide to use any other "stop leak" specific products other than the high mileage oil which is a good idea anyway. Link: https://titansealers.com/Titan_Oil_Stop_Leak/
Looks interesting. site was pretty mobile unfriendly or at least on my phone.
Wonder if that stuff works.