21 T4R- 20k miles Timing Cover Leak

[BetteMidler]

Hello All,

Went in for my 20k oil change and they found a significant timing cover leak at the dealership. It’s covered under warranty but I’m not stoked that they have to pull the whole engine.

Wondering from everyone’s experience how common is this on a newer model? I’ve had 2 previous 4th Gens that I beat up pretty well, both had 250k+ and neither had a single issue.

I believe some of the older engines were more susceptible but is this something I should be concerned with?

Tks in advance

 

[osugsxr]

Hello All,

Went in for my 20k oil change and they found a significant timing cover leak at the dealership. It’s covered under warranty but I’m not stoked that they have to pull the whole engine.

Wondering from everyone’s experience how common is this on a newer model? I’ve had 2 previous 4th Gens that I beat up pretty well, both had 250k+ and neither had a single issue.

I believe some of the older engines were more susceptible but is this something I should be concerned with?

Tks in advance

its 1 in 5 at 20k miles :suspicious:

just bad luck with that, it can happen whenever

 

[czgunner]

Pretty sure engine doesn't need to come out.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

 

[DEF4Runner]

I'm suprised the dealer just didn't wash any signs of it away.

 

[wsu_runner]

Had it on our 4th gen. I'd heard that Toyota revised the procedure so the engine didn't need to come out but they pulled engines for years in response to the problem so I interpreted that as Toyota saving money by cutting corners on a common issue.

I hadn't heard it was a common problem on 5th gen. Good luck; keep us posted.

 

[Jeremy556]

I haven't done one on the dual vvti 1gre in the 5th gen 4runner, but the old one you just had to pull everything off the front of the engine. Either way, it's a big job only for having to remove lots of ancillary stuff. Not too much chance to screw anything up that would make me worry about long term reliability for having it done.

My 2011 has a slight leak, and has for the last 200k miles, like probably most 5th gens will. Not worth the trouble of fixing, IMHO. If it was noticed at 20k miles, they probably really screwed up the RTV at the factory on that motor.

 

[rdruss]

I'm suprised the dealer just didn't wash any signs of it away.

It's a big hour/$ job, even if under warranty.

 

[Jeremy556]

It's a big hour/$ job, even if under warranty.

Not sure on the current engine, but the old one was 6.8 or 7.7 hours depending on if 2wd or 4wd.

 

[baldrik78]

You just got lucky. The timing cover leak on these engines seems pretty rare, but probably the most common "big issue". You can find some YouTube videos out there were mechanics go through the fix - it's a lot. Basically the who front of the engine needs to come off - fan, water pump, valve covers and then timing cover. It doesn't look terribly hard, just time consuming.

The leaks are typically pretty small, mostly just a slight seepage. Now that I'm out of warranty, if mine started leaking, I don't think I'd fix it. I'd just hit the oily spot with some cleaner every now and again.

 

[MP486]

15k miles and my t4R is at the dealership getting repaired for timing cover leak. I noticed it around 13k.