» » »

Toyota Q&A

Ask Your Question

1999 Toyota Camry Question: Leaking rear main seal after Crank Shaft seal replacement

 

Question

diymechanic99, 2.2L 4 Cylinder, Lorain, OH, February 02, 2013, 06:42
 Rookie

I recently had the front Crank and Cam shaft seals replaced on my 1999 Camry CE, 2.2L 4 cyl. I read in a post that when replacing the Front Crank Seal you can damage the rear main seal if it moves too much. Is there any evaluation that the mechanic can do to check wether the bearings/side colars are bad and not worth replacing the rear seal??? Meaning do I need an engine rebuild? Or if I replace the rear seal, will a get another 20-30k miles out of the car? As you can imagine, the cost to replace the rear main is $525 in labor + the seal. any advice that you can offer would help.

1 Answer
Answer It
Flag This

  • Answer #1

    pushrod February 02, 2013, 08:50
     Master

    Replacment of front engine seals does not affect any rear seals!! What i do on these engines is replace the cam, crank, oil pump seal and gasket along with timing belt componets with water pump valve cover gasket and pcv valve. Have the installer recheck for seal damaged when it was installed or a leak created with repair, ie valve cover gasket ect. Rear main seals rarely give any problem on this eng.
    Also have oil pressure switch/sending unit checked. Oil leaks can be deceiving! Leak at one point but appear somwhere else. How many miles on the car, 200,000 or more?

    Flag This

  • Reply

    diymechanic99, February 03, 2013, 17:45
     Rookie

    The car has 123,000 on it. I purchased it with 87,000 miles in 2009. I'm taking it back tomorrow to see the mechanic who did the work 2 weeks ago.

    I'll let you know what they say.

    Flag This

  • Reply

    pushrod, February 03, 2013, 21:50
     Master

    That is low mileage for a 99 you should get a bunch more on this car! I don't think the rear seal is leaking but i have been wrong before!
    Get back to us when you find out.
    Thanks.

    Flag This

  • Reply

    diymechanic99, February 04, 2013, 06:35
     Rookie

    I took it back to the Mechanic that did the original work on front seals and the Oil Pan Gasket. He said the oil pan gasket is leaking and there might be another source on the top of the engine.

    He's going to redo the oil pan gasket. My question is, besides the valve cover gasket on the top of the engine, what else could leak oil?

    Flag This

  • Reply

    camrylove, February 04, 2013, 07:03
     Enthusiast

    There is another seal inside the valve cover - this seal goes in where the distributor used to be on previous model engines.

    Flag This

  • Reply

    diymechanic99, February 10, 2013, 05:37
     Rookie

    Bad news. As I suspected, the rear main seal was also bad. The mechanic said when he changed the Front Crank Seal there was no play in the pulley/crank when he removed the crank pulley. The good news is there are no more leaks! I hope I can get another 60k out of the car. It has 123k on it now.

    Thanks everyone for your insight.

    Reply
    Flag This
Shops and Dealerships near you

Featured Shops and Dealerships

Answer Ranks

This week's top 10

1 globalhelper 6 Jill Trotta
2 pushrod 7 milesauto
3 ziptie12 8 gearhead89
4 ella1234 9 Hal...
5 csubak30 10 Eric Sevim