so is this going to happen to everyone's transfer case actuator eventually due to the design or is it a defect for random 4th gens?

The service advisor at my toyota dealer said I could "..probably wait until my next oil change" before getting it fixed. Up to you, but I would not want to go cross country (during winter) with any issues involving actuators/transfer cases/etc...

Does anybody have any experience with transmission shops in San Diego?

So a replacement seal does exist, yet some guys are still considering replacing the entire actuator with a new or used unit. Why?

So, I just pulled this thing out. It isn't too hard. I'll try to simplify it here, and this is going by memory; Remove the front & rear yoke grease fittings. Remove the yoke 4 nuts each, knock the driveshafts a bit so the yokes come loose, compress the yoke on the driveshaft, grease will come out the open zerk fitting holes so you can remove the yokes. Remove the transmission mount, be sure to brace the transmission. Total here is 4 long bolts, 4 very short bolts at the middle bottom to tranny mount, and 8 bolts to get the braces off. Remove the electrical plug. You need some sort of jack stand unless you are young and feel strong. But unless you are very careful, you'll damage the transmission seal pulling the xfer case off or going in. Lower the jack to the tranny and let everything relax on the front motormounts. Remove the 7 or so 12mm hex head bolts that hold the xfer case to the tranny. Carefully slide the case back and down to the floor. On and off is the hardest part. This is actually no more than 2 hours of real work so far, Everything I described is literally 8 nuts, 2 grease fittings and 16 bolts to have the xfer case on the floor. I bought a little wooden dolley from Harbor freight, perfect for the rebuild. Once the case is out and in the open, turn it on end, tranny side down. 12, 12mm hex head bolts take the short side of the case off. Use a breaker bar and a 3/4" drive appropriate american socket for the FAR (under)side yoke. You might think the upper yoke needs to come off because its right at the top, but you would be wrong. Totally unneccesary. You don't need an impact driver to get the big yoke nut off, and don't worry about the indented nut , just unscrew it. Tap the yoke off. Oil will flow. Oh yea, you should have drained the oil first.Now the case will come apart. Be nice, I used an old STIHL plastic wedge from my chainsaw kit and some wood shims once I cracked the case w/ a prybar at the ONE place that lets you get it started. DO NOT put metal anything to pry the lid up at the sealing surfaces.Use wood shims evenly around the opening case so the upper bearing pulls down nice and evenly. Now the case top is off, which includes what you are after. Turn it over, tt will rest on the actuator, and put the yoke nut back on and the socket, and you will have it standing with its shifter forks plainly visible. There's your 3 circlips and 2 shift forks that have to come off to let the actuator come right out. I removed the circlips by grabbing the back of the "C" tightly with a vice grip and prying on the vice grip, the c clip came right off. Then, undo each shift fork bolt. Take a picture of the setup BEFORE you remove the internal gears/ fork combinations. It generally goes one way, but you can scare yourself if you pull it off willy nilly and just set it down, so take a pic. The internal gears slide up and off, keep the fork right where it is on the gear, handle it as a set. keep them stacked just the way they went off, and there's no confusion. Turn the part on its side, and undo the three 12 mm hex bolts holding the actuator on. Make sure you clean up where the $5 o-ring is. I do not know anything about the seals at the 2 rods, so I am anxious to know if you can really buy them or not. It is ludicrous that you couldn't, because they are not part of the plastic. That isn't what leaked on mine. Mine was the thin o-ring under the plastic cheap, warped lid with the one screw holding it in place. I cleaned the surfaces w/ a rag dipped w/ brake cleaner, and sparingly put RTV on the metal mating surface afte mounting the new o-ring. From there, reverse the order. I'm mechanicallly inclined but do not do this for a living. In between curious neighbors stopping by, and drinking wine, this entire job really took [COLOR="Black"]6 hours. Without a manual. It is not a 22 hour job. It is not rocket science. I have some pertinent pictures if anyone needs them. gmyatko at g mail dot com. good luck. BY FAR, the only hard part is getting the xfer case lined up and put back in. I bought two 110 mm bolts and cut the ends off and used them for guides going in, so not to screw up the trans seal. It slides straight ahead then. You should have as much room underneath as you can possibly make. I used 4 8" plastic ramps, and I could have used another 8". That was the ONLY hard part, transferring the transfer case to a jack while under the truck. I actually made a bracket that I screwed into my existing floor jack, because the tranny adapter that I bought was much too tall with the xfer case on it to maneuver. Thats all I can think of. Put the right gear oil back in. and don't forget to put the zerk fittings back on the yokes when they are in, and pumping them back up with grease. Oh yea, be patient sliding the internal gears back on. They DO slide on, but is a very tight tolerance running and sliding fit. It goes, don't cock it, just very small movements will get it to slide on. I reused my circlips. I even forgot the top one. So what. They aren't needed. If you don't have a manual like I didn't. read up on torque specs. for the various size bolts. And invent your own torqueing pattern when putting the case back together. Your guess is as good as theirs. I used a felt tip marker to write nubers 1 thru 12 on each bolt, and tightened the pattern 1/3 of the torque and then increased it until I got to my required torque settings tha I dreamt up with as much material as I could read up on, and then pulled the final number out of my ars. And I forgot what it was now. Hah! Now that is all.

So, I just pulled this thing out. It isn't too hard. I'll try to simplify it here, and this is going by memory; Remove the front & rear yoke grease fittings. Remove the yoke 4 nuts each, knock the driveshafts a bit so the yokes come loose, compress the yoke on the driveshaft, grease will come out the open zerk fitting holes so you can remove the yokes. Remove the transmission mount, be sure to brace the transmission. Total here is 4 long bolts, 4 very short bolts at the middle bottom to tranny mount, and 8 bolts to get the braces off. Remove the electrical plug. You need some sort of jack stand unless you are young and feel strong. But unless you are very careful, you'll damage the transmission seal pulling the xfer case off or going in. Lower the jack to the tranny and let everything relax on the front motormounts. Remove the 7 or so 12mm hex head bolts that hold the xfer case to the tranny. Carefully slide the case back and down to the floor. On and off is the hardest part. This is actually no more than 2 hours of real work so far, Everything I described is literally 8 nuts, 2 grease fittings and 16 bolts to have the xfer case on the floor. I bought a little wooden dolley from Harbor freight, perfect for the rebuild. Once the case is out and in the open, turn it on end, tranny side down. 12, 12mm hex head bolts take the short side of the case off. Use a breaker bar and a 3/4" drive appropriate american socket for the FAR (under)side yoke. You might think the upper yoke needs to come off because its right at the top, but you would be wrong. Totally unneccesary. You don't need an impact driver to get the big yoke nut off, and don't worry about the indented nut , just unscrew it. Tap the yoke off. Oil will flow. Oh yea, you should have drained the oil first.Now the case will come apart. Be nice, I used an old STIHL plastic wedge from my chainsaw kit and some wood shims once I cracked the case w/ a prybar at the ONE place that lets you get it started. DO NOT put metal anything to pry the lid up at the sealing surfaces.Use wood shims evenly around the opening case so the upper bearing pulls down nice and evenly. Now the case top is off, which includes what you are after. Turn it over, tt will rest on the actuator, and put the yoke nut back on and the socket, and you will have it standing with its shifter forks plainly visible. There's your 3 circlips and 2 shift forks that have to come off to let the actuator come right out. I removed the circlips by grabbing the back of the "C" tightly with a vice grip and prying on the vice grip, the c clip came right off. Then, undo each shift fork bolt. Take a picture of the setup BEFORE you remove the internal gears/ fork combinations. It generally goes one way, but you can scare yourself if you pull it off willy nilly and just set it down, so take a pic. The internal gears slide up and off, keep the fork right where it is on the gear, handle it as a set. keep them stacked just the way they went off, and there's no confusion. Turn the part on its side, and undo the three 12 mm hex bolts holding the actuator on. Make sure you clean up where the $5 o-ring is. I do not know anything about the seals at the 2 rods, so I am anxious to know if you can really buy them or not. It is ludicrous that you couldn't, because they are not part of the plastic. That isn't what leaked on mine. Mine was the thin o-ring under the plastic cheap, warped lid with the one screw holding it in place. I cleaned the surfaces w/ a rag dipped w/ brake cleaner, and sparingly put RTV on the metal mating surface afte mounting the new o-ring. From there, reverse the order. I'm mechanicallly inclined but do not do this for a living. In between curious neighbors stopping by, and drinking wine, this entire job really took [COLOR="Black"]6 hours. Without a manual. It is not a 22 hour job. It is not rocket science. I have some pertinent pictures if anyone needs them. gmyatko at g mail dot com. good luck. BY FAR, the only hard part is getting the xfer case lined up and put back in. I bought two 110 mm bolts and cut the ends off and used them for guides going in, so not to screw up the trans seal. It slides straight ahead then. You should have as much room underneath as you can possibly make. I used 4 8" plastic ramps, and I could have used another 8". That was the ONLY hard part, transferring the transfer case to a jack while under the truck. I actually made a bracket that I screwed into my existing floor jack, because the tranny adapter that I bought was much too tall with the xfer case on it to maneuver. Thats all I can think of. Put the right gear oil back in. and don't forget to put the zerk fittings back on the yokes when they are in, and pumping them back up with grease.

gmyatko,

Where did you find the replacement o-ring? Is this something we can buy at a dealership parts department? I'm confused because some people say you have to buy the whole actuator, but others have said you can buy the o-ring by itself.

Also, if you installed a new o-ring, why would you also use RTV?

Did Toyota ever resolve this issue with later models? Will my 08 V6 eventually leak or is this an issue only for the V8 AWD?

I believe the actuator is the same on both the V6 and the V8. But that doesn't mean yours will ever leak. It may not be the best design (with the o-ring and the plastic housing), but still it doesn't seem like everybody is developing leaks.

I looked at the exploded view in my 4runner service manual and it is a job to take the tcase off and split it and pull the actuator off just to replace the o-ring gasket. But it is not rocket science either.

I also looked on line and found a place that will sell an entire new factory tcase for $2045. So I would be hard pressed to pay someone $2k to fix this when I could buy a new tcase and swap it myself. WTF?

I am guessing it would take me about 8-10 hours to do the whole job start to finish. I would also just buy a rebuild kit for the tcase and replace all of the bearings, gaskets and seals while in there. Or maybe find a local shop to rebuild it for me and just do the pull & re-install of the whole case myself.

BTW, the tcase on the V6 is the VF4AM and on the V8 is the VF4BM

Is that price really for a NEW transfer case, or is it a rebuilt unit?

And I'm not sure why anyone would buy a whole new transfer case unless their old one is broken. I surely wouldn't do buy a new one if my only problem is a leak. I'd rather buy the $5 o-ring and fix it myself!

Has anyone had luck with just changing the seals for the shift actuator? I just had this start on my 04 AWD v8 4Runner. The dealer says its a plastic part that warps and wants to replace the entire shift actuator (at an extra $1000). My local trans shop can do the seal but will this actually solve the problem? The actuator appears to be fine and trans shifts without issues.

how many miles do you have? i'm gonna take it to the dealer to get something else fixed but also ask them to check it for leaks.

I've got just over 100k miles, no warranty It needs a trans flush at this point too.

Out of interest, has anybody with access to shop manuals established whether this design has carried over to the 5th Gen?