Chasing Down Oil Leak – 2005 Tahoe 5.3L

[West 1]

I am older and work slow, I do have a tranny jack and a couple floor jacks. My Oil Pan Gasket replacement did not fix my leak but with the pan off I could see the leak was coming down the starter side of the block from the Rear Main Seal cover plate gasket. I spent 1/2 day or more pulling the drive shafts and transfer case. Exhaust from the manifolds to the connection behind the tranny. Removed the Torsion bars and then unbolted and dropped the tranny down and out. I changed the tranny pan gasket and filter while the tranny was out. The next day I installed the new Rear Main Seal into the cover plate and then on to the block. I do have an alignment tool for this but these Teflon Rear main seals are self centering. You do need to install these on the crankshaft clean and dry, no oil, no grease, no assembly lube. There should be a plastic installation guide. Slip that over the crank and push your new seal and plate into position. Let the seal center itself. Torque the mounting plate bolts evenly into place using multiple steps and this part is done. I waited till the next day to start putting the tranny back in. Working alone, with no lift it took me maybe 4 hours to get the tranny and other parts back in. Another hour to get the tranny fluid installed and all air out of that system. It is not a fun job. With no experience there are many things that can go wrong. If your shop quoted $800 for this job when todays shop hourly rates are $150 that sounds like a very fair price.

With a lift and good tools it can be done much faster but there is nothing easy about a rms leak repair. As far as pulling the engine for this repair I don’t know. The tranny bolts are difficult to get to in these cars and for me pulling and installing those took up a large part of the time. Pulling the engine or pulling the tranny these bolts have to come out. Once they are out the rest of tranny removal is straight forward.
I should mention to be fair, I live on the West coast, almost every bolt is not rusted and comes out when needed. In the rust belt states many of these might break or be stuck.

 

[2591tdj]

I am older and work slow, I do have a tranny jack and a couple floor jacks. My Oil Pan Gasket replacement did not fix my leak but with the pan off I could see the leak was coming down the starter side of the block from the Rear Main Seal cover plate gasket. I spent 1/2 day or more pulling the drive shafts and transfer case. Exhaust from the manifolds to the connection behind the tranny. Removed the Torsion bars and then unbolted and dropped the tranny down and out. I changed the tranny pan gasket and filter while the tranny was out. The next day I installed the new Rear Main Seal into the cover plate and then on to the block. I do have an alignment tool for this but these Teflon Rear main seals are self centering. You do need to install these on the crankshaft clean and dry, no oil, no grease, no assembly lube. There should be a plastic installation guide. Slip that over the crank and push your new seal and plate into position. Let the seal center itself. Torque the mounting plate bolts evenly into place using multiple steps and this part is done. I waited till the next day to start putting the tranny back in. Working alone, with no lift it took me maybe 4 hours to get the tranny and other parts back in. Another hour to get the tranny fluid installed and all air out of that system. It is not a fun job. With no experience there are many things that can go wrong. If your shop quoted $800 for this job when todays shop hourly rates are $150 that sounds like a very fair price.

With a lift and good tools it can be done much faster but there is nothing easy about a rms leak repair. As far as pulling the engine for this repair I don’t know. The tranny bolts are difficult to get to in these cars and for me pulling and installing those took up a large part of the time. Pulling the engine or pulling the tranny these bolts have to come out. Once they are out the rest of tranny removal is straight forward.
I should mention to be fair, I live on the West coast, almost every bolt is not rusted and comes out when needed. In the rust belt states many of these might break or be stuck.

Thanks for the excellent discussion of the steps you went thru. I grew up working on vehicles, plus my dad owned an auto parts store and a garage that I worked in during my teen years. Now that I’m retired I no longer have the desire, place to work or proper tools to tackle such a job (more lack of desire than anything else) so I’ll bite the bullet and pay a mechanic when the time comes.

 

[adventurenali92]

I just tackled my oil pan on my 2006 LQ4 6.0 because the crappy shop that replaced my pickup tube o ring in June of 2022 didn’t use the brand new genuine GM pickup tube and o ring that I brought them to use and the cheap crap they used failed which resulted in oil pressure loss on a highway drive down off the mountain. I have had an oil leak forever and in December I replaced the crank pulley seal hoping that would take care of it, but not so much. Anyways I could tell that the timing cover behind the crank pulley was always wet and covered in crud. So while I was into the oil pan to do the pick up tube seal, I also pulled the drive accessories and replaced my timing cover seal, and another crank pulley seal. Basically all the oil that was leaking out the timing cover seal ended up and the bottom of the pan which made it look like a rear main or pan gasket leak. Had done those two already. After buttoning up the oil pan with a fresh GM pickup tube o ring and new timing cover it’s been dry as a bone. So you could be leaking higher up and at the front of the engine with the timing cover or crank pulley seal.