oil INSIDE my cherokee / trans mount

took the seats out of my xj yesterday and found out that the front seats rear inside flange bolts are coated with oil. an inspection of the underside revealed oil spray all over the underside of the trans and body. the carpet around the flange is coated with oil. was there any cover for this bolt, or what should i do?

its getting annoying smelling oil when i drive long distances.


2.) as im looking for the oil spray i noticed that the transmission mounting pad is really, REALLY REALLY soft. i want to replace the pad with a polyurethane mount. what i know i should do is fix the oil leak and replace the pad, but for now, i want to just fix the pad with something NOW. will the Polyurethane pad hold up to oil?



HELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHEP!!!!!!!!!!

YesYesYesYesYes it will stand up to oil much better than the OEM rubber one.

Make sure your valve cover bolts are snug, not gorilla tight just good n tight. Clean the engine and then find the highest point that the oil is, oil leaks down, not up.

RichP said:

Make sure your valve cover bolts are snug, not gorilla tight just good n tight. Clean the engine and then find the highest point that the oil is, oil leaks down, not up.

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Wow is that a news flash Mr Newton. Wow gravity who knew that it could affect oil too!!!!:flame:

Ozone and UV (from Sunlight) destroys rubber, as well, motor mounts the use/abuse of constantly bending/compressing/stretching softens them up as well. I'm sure oil helps degrade rubber mounts, but more likely it was just contributing to mounts that were already wearing. There is lots of advice and good arguments that if you replace one mount, you should replace all three, so consider that.

If you got that much oil spread around, then it has to be affecting the fluid level of its source, so that's your first clue to the source, what ever has been dropping in fluid and needs you to add is likely the source.

Like mentioned, clean the engine/trans/underbody thoroughly, so you can spot the leak as it starts to spread again from its source. Replace the seal that is leaking.

Another one to check, the CCV system on most of these Jeeps. The little orifice will clog, it will cause pressure to surge in the crankcase and puke oil out of the breather tube as well, force it past the valve cover gasket. It can't hurt to clean that orifice with a pipe cleaner and some solvent, like TB cleaner. If you've got dirty oil on the air filter, you've got a clogged CCV that is puking up oil.

thats the other thing i was gonna ask, i DO have oil in my air filter. where am i checking for the ccv? is it in the airbox? i dont have a valve mounted on the valve cover....

There is an orifice mounted on the valve cover, in my 2.5L 4 cyl its a brass plug (hollow with an orifice inside) bolted into the side of the valve cover, on the 4.0L I think they swap positions of the orifice and breather, with the breather tube on the front and the orifice in the rear. The orifice is tiny, it doesn't look like a valve, it looks like a brass fitting to mount a tube, which it is, just that the inside necks down to a tiny orifice.

The orifice has to be clean and clear, with a good tight vacuum connection running to the intake manifold fitting underneath the TB. The breather has to have a tight fittings running from the valve cover to the air filter box.

The orifice connected to the intake manifold using engine vacuum to suck a small flow of air through the crankcase and keep the air flowing through it. Air is let into the crankcase from the breather tube from air filter box.

If the orifice clogs, and its easy since just a tiny passage, air will NOT flow through the crankcase, and instead, as the pistons move up and down at high speed the air will surge back and forth with air pressure surges. This froths up the oil and surges oil up into the breather tube that then drains down into the air filter. As well, the pressure surges can blow oil past the valve cover gasket and get oil all over the motor, it may have even blown out your valve cover gasket, it might have done the same to other seals, either force oil past it or blown them.

Looking up the CCV in the Haynes or Chiltons should tell you everything you need to know.

When Chrysler started putting their own engines into the later Jeeps, they stuck with the PCV system that everyone else uses, its much more reliable.

Rick Anderson said:

There is an orifice mounted on the valve cover, in my 2.5L 4 cyl its a brass plug (hollow with an orifice inside) bolted into the side of the valve cover, on the 4.0L I think they swap positions of the orifice and breather, with the breather tube on the front and the orifice in the rear. The orifice is tiny, it doesn't look like a valve, it looks like a brass fitting to mount a tube, which it is, just that the inside necks down to a tiny orifice.

The orifice has to be clean and clear, with a good tight vacuum connection running to the intake manifold fitting underneath the TB. The breather has to have a tight fittings running from the valve cover to the air filter box.

The orifice connected to the intake manifold using engine vacuum to suck a small flow of air through the crankcase and keep the air flowing through it. Air is let into the crankcase from the breather tube from air filter box.

If the orifice clogs, and its easy since just a tiny passage, air will NOT flow through the crankcase, and instead, as the pistons move up and down at high speed the air will surge back and forth with air pressure surges. This froths up the oil and surges oil up into the breather tube that then drains down into the air filter. As well, the pressure surges can blow oil past the valve cover gasket and get oil all over the motor, it may have even blown out your valve cover gasket, it might have done the same to other seals, either force oil past it or blown them.

Looking up the CCV in the Haynes or Chiltons should tell you everything you need to know.

When Chrysler started putting their own engines into the later Jeeps, they stuck with the PCV system that everyone else uses, its much more reliable.

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well, i tried to get this fixed, but im such a newb, that i dont know what you mean by ccv. i know you mean crankcase ventilation, but i only know that as PCV.

either way, here is a link to the pictures i just took today to give you an idea of the amount of leakage im dealing with.
hasta
http://flickr.com/photos/photo-synthesis/

if anyone can help me find the source, that would be greatly appreciated!!

What usually happens is that people who use dino oil, you know, the regular oil and don't always change it or ever give the engine a chance to warm up tend to get alot of sludge built up, this sludge collects at the far end of the oil path where there is no pressure, the end of the engines path is the valve cover and top of the head. The oil/water/dirt collects there and creates sludge that builds up in layers like mud. The CCV valve [it does not actually move like PCV valve] on the newer engines is in the back top of the valve cover, that connects to the inlet on the engine so it pulls the vapors and unburned fuel and puts it back into the cylinders to burn up. It also pulls the oil vapors and these vapors build up in that small plastic hose. The bigger hose in the front is supposed to allow air into the valve cover area to compensate for the other stuff being sucked out. Once the small hose and CCV clog it start pulling this crap and dumping it into the filter box and soaks your air filter. The other thing that happens is the sludge build up in the top of the head gradually raises the oil level and the CCV starts sucking up straight oil. The oil that the engine pumps up into the top of the head is supposed to run back down into the oil pan through the return passages, as they clog up the oil returns slower.
If you look at almost any engine that does real regular oil changes during it's whole life AND the owner lets it warm up to operating temp for AT LEAST 30 min they generally don't have a sludge problem. Heating the oil up cooks off the unburned fuel and water vapor. Ever see your exhaust system on a cold start blow water out the tail pipe from collected condensated moisture in the muffler and pipes ? The oil in the engine has that same issue except it does not have any tail pipe to blow out of.
If you want to fix this correctly you will need to remove the valve cover.
Clean it completely
Take a shop vac and a plastic scraper, use a crevice tool, that long narrow one that vacum cleaners come with.
Use the scraper and shop vac together, I can't stress this enough, you need to remove all the crap or sludge thats up there and get it out of there, working the vac and scraper in tandem will do this. You DO NOT want to break that crap free and have it return to the oil pan or it will block the oil pump pickup screen and take out your main bearings. Some people stuff shop rags down the return passages, I don't think thats a good idea as you can break crap loose just by stuffing the rags in. Do not be tempted to scrape for 4 minutes and then vacum, do the scraping and vacuming together.
You can also get the CCV lines from the dealer, new and clean, $17 or $24 comes to mind for some reason.
As soon as you get the valve cover off vac the edges of the head where the valve cover was, sure as god made little green apples there is going to be some loose stuff there and you need to get out of there.
If you see a bunch of crap go down the return passages you really should drop the oil pan and clean it out right then and there. If you end up going that far then it's no big deal to use solvents to clean it up even more but only use the solvents if you are going to drop the pan, you don't want to start breaking down the crud in the return passages where you can't see it.
I've been there once and did it wrong once, had to replace a crank, TWICE, as the replacement broke the day after I put it in, yes, I pulled the motor TWICE in two days.

thanks rich, looks like ill be doing some heavy cleaning tomorrow morning.

hombremosqa said:

thanks rich, looks like ill be doing some heavy cleaning tomorrow morning.

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DO NOT use your wifes or mothers house vacum cleaner or you may find your underwear getting large amounts of starch in them....

hehe thats not a prob, got my own dedicated shop vac.

ok, so it took me a while, but i finally cleaned everything out. problem is persisting. i posted a thread on here a while ago when i was in vegas, and turns out that i had oil in my distributor. imagine that! ive never heard of that happening before.

so i got the distributor replaced, and so far, its not been leaking too much oil. BUT i am still getting oil IN/ON my air filter.

and i still stand by the statement, :"I DONT SEEM TO HAVE A PCV/CCV VALVE"
Does anyone have a part number for that? everytime i go to Auto-know?Zone, or Crapp- i mean checker, they dont have one. please let me know. im getting really really impatient with this...... thanks!

Hallo, Also check your high pressure powersteering hose.
When it has a tiny leak, it wil spray oil into the main frame.
It happend to my XJ. All the inside carpets were sucked with powersteering fluid!:clap:

You need to find out where it's coming from, usually when you get oil that far back it's not from the engine. I would check my transfer case fluid first, once you rule that out start moving forward.
As far as CCV, you got one, if you have a hose coming out of the top rear of the valve cover thats it, the second one in the front is for allowing clean filtered air back in to the engine, if you are getting oil in the air filter it's because that hose in the back is blocked and the engine is pulling oil soaked air into the filter, the oil being heavier tends to drop out of the air flow on to the filter. That back hose can be blocked two ways, the orifice thats down inside the cover could be sludged up or those thin hoses could be blocked like an artery gets blocked with dried up old oil. I've seen valve covers removed and heavy sludge build up that actually surrounds the pickup tubes or slows the oil return to the pan which submerges the pickup tubes in oil, fix for that is either clean the crap out of there or shorten the tubes, cleaning is better.

ill be giving that a shot tomorrow then. i did clean out the hoses (actually broke it is what i did, but managed to splice it with a section of vacuum hose) have actually noticed that there is not as much oil dripping now so i guess cleaning did help alot. ill be checking the transfer case levels tomorrow morning. thanks guys!

This engine sounds worn out and blowing oil anywhere it can...