rear main seal leak repair?

How many labor hours have you been quoted for this on a 5VZFE with A340E tranny, 2wd? It's definitely engine oil and is not coming from the rear valve covers or oil pan. Right around the rear of the engine. It's only adding a couple drops to the garage floor each time. I plan on keeping an eye on it but want to gauge whether it's worth having done as maintenance before a catastropic leak.

 

I would expect around $1500 labor at the lowest to remove the trans and replace the seal.

 

Have you done the oil cooler, seems like even though its on the side of the engine the oil gets blown towards the back by air pressure. I suspect this is about 1 hr labor. When I did mine at about 12 years it was brittle.

My rear main looked OK even at 20 years, its has a spring to maintain pressure on the shaft.

 

I haven't. That would be cool. The oil beads made their way to the bottom front of the transmission and also on one or two metal tubes nearby. I was just under there today replacing O2 sensors and noticed it again. I'm not familiar with the oil cooler location so I might have to look into it.

 

if it ends up being the rear main seal its really not that hard to drop the transmission. When I did my 4x4 conversion obviously i had to drop the 2 wd transmission and removal was not hard. Getting it back takes a bit more work but if you have a transmission jack makes things much easier. For me the hardest part was getting those transmission lines off and back on. And the starter.
I replaced the rear main seal since i had the trans down but orginal seal looked fine. Truck had a little over 200k miles on it. Good luck

 

It looks like you have 2Wd so you might be able to clean the rear part of the oil pan, on 4x4 its basically impossible to access. Then you could check for oil tracks, if its rear seal I don't think oil could easily move forward on the engine. Oil cooler is on driver side, you can see it through the fender liner. Or better yet, just shine a flashlight on the engine block just below the oil cooler - if wet that's it.

Seems like almost any oil leak on the engine ends up in the rear of engine and trans just like you described (especially ends up on steering rack), I think its from air blowing it back. I have replaced all seals on my engine over last 2 years and then I had oil on the steering rack and trans again! So I figured it had to be oil cooler because that all that is left, just did it and so far so good.

Doing this repair is not hard but if you not experienced I would have it done because its awkward to get to, especially kneeling on the ground and probably best to have those extra long handled pliers to get the hose clamps off.
Also I'm very careful not to drop it, by chance I saw what they get for that unit - all I can say is holy cow it's almost worth its weight in gold!

 

I also had a tiny amount of oil dripping from my rear seal. My mechanic said the cause was from my rear cam plugs and the oil cooler assembly. No oil drips since.

 

Sounds like an above average mechanic, most don't know about the cam seals, I confess I did the first valve cover gasket replace w/o cam seals and it did not make any difference except stopped oil leaks onto exhaust mani.