Fixing Oil Leaks

All,

I know fixing oil leaks on a jeep is sort of a futile effort, but I'm making an attempt at it.

99' XJ 4.0 AW4 NP 231. 185K miles now, stock except for after market tube front bumper.

Took a bunch of work to get the oil pan off but succeeded last night. This morning, got the rear main cap off and removed the rear main seal from the block and cap it was pretty toasted. Also replacing the oil pump for good measure, I'm in there might as well. Ordered a Melling HV pump to help combat aging bearings.

Also this morning, removed the harmonic balancer and attempted to remove the front seal from the timing cover with a regular seal puller. I also have the front bumper off to aid in access to the front of the engine. I can't get a good angle on it to remove the seal. It doesn't look like there is room to get a 2-3 jaw puller in there.

What has everyone else done to get the seal out of the cover? Do you need to remove the timing cover to get the right tools involved?

Any advise appreciated!

Also to be done this coming week:

Oil pan gasket (Obviously)
Oil Pump
Rear Main
Front Main
Valve Cover Gasket
Valve Cover Elbows
Ignition Tune Up

Thanks for reading appreciate the help.

I took the timing cover off and used a punch to knock the seal loose on the edge and then my regular seal puller worked like a charm. Be very gentle with the punch, you do not want to scar the inside of the timing cover. I just changed all the same gaskets on a 1990 XJ, and I would make one suggestion and that is to get the better "reusable" hybrid Gasket that is a metal frame with "pre-cured" RTV built into it. They had them for both the valve cover and the oil pan for my 4.0, I've changed the valve cover Gasket many times on a 4.0 and this was the first time I was offered the reusable Gasket, not that I will reuse it, but it seals up better and is a lot easier to work with when you go to put the oil pan back on.

Plus this Gasket don't act like someone JB-welded the oil pan on when you go to remove it. I ran into that problem on the oil pan on this 4.0, I have to beat a pickle fork (ball-joint separater) down both sides of the oil pan to get it to break free, like someone had Used JB-weld instead of a little RTV. Judging by the 3 tubes worth of RTV that was inside the transmission from the idiot that services it last, I wouldn't put anything past them if they did the oil pan too.

Make sure you get after the stuff on the passenger side of the engine too. Teflon tape works great for sealing up the threads on the oil pressure sending unit. You'll probably need a special socket (readily available at most parts stores) to remove it though. There's also a small gasket at the base of the distributor. Felpro makes one which you can pick up for a couple bucks, which is nice because I probably went through 3 before getting one that didn't leak. There's also the O-rings in the oil filter adapter. Plenty of info here on how to replace those.

may want to replace the timing chain seeing your in there anyway.

I did get the front seal out without removing the timing cover. I used a small set of channel lock pliers to wedge up underneath the seal and pry it out. Worked pretty well once I was able to get some leverage on it.

New RMS is installed, new oil pump is assembled with the new pickup tube. Just need to clean up the block and the oil pan and i'll be reinstalling the pan.

I did pick up the Fel-pro permadry gaskets kits for the valve cover and oil pan. They are a molded one piece operation that looks very good. They do tell you to use some RTV on the joints to the rear main cap and the timing cover, but they are specific to say use a very small amount.

I was very careful to clean the engine well with some degreaser about 2 months ago and didn't get any wetness or seeping from oil filter adapter, or the passenger side of the block. I'm hopeful those are still good for now.

Thanks for the tips all.