I cannot seem to stop all the leaks. Head gasket seals, oil pan, cv boots, power steering, radiator, etc. I fix one leak and the next day discover there's another one. Usually engine oil. I just fixed the oil pan gasket leak and discovered oil on my garage floor again this morning. I can't distinguish the source of this one. Looks like it's coming from behind the timing cover.
But my question is, is it kind of dumb to expect no leaking anything anywhere ever past 250k? I feel at this point like I need to accept that I'm gonna have to live with oil leaks for the rest of this car's life. What is the frequency of leaks in your trucks, guys also over 250k miles?
Thanks much.
Yes on a two decade old vehicle with a quarter of a million miles it's not abnormal to see it leaking. You didn't mention what engine you're running, but I am going to assume it's the V6.
The 5VZ-FE is a solid engine, but they also tend to be a bit leaky over time, particularly if you don't reseal them properly, which I have seen a lot of times. I would need to see pictures of your vehicle at least to get a rough idea of what you're working with, but based on my experience and what I have seen on a regular basis for 3rd gens I'd say that you're probably going to want to inspect/replace/reseal the following items:
-Cam & Crank Seals (common to see them seeping/leaking at this time/mileage)
-Valve Cover Gaskets (when replacing these you need to clean & reseal the aluminum half moons with FIPG, and replace the rubber cam plugs on the back;
DO NOT put FIPG on the rubber seals, they tend to leak if you do that and I see it done incorrectly all the time; do torque everything properly, particularly when you replace the valve cover bolt grommets. Torque it in a criss-cross pattern and in stages rechecking the torque, you'd be surprised how often one or two passes isn't enough to equally seal the cover.)
-Rear Main Seal (while you're in there, do reseal the rear main seal retaining plate and scrub the crankshaft clean of caked on oil deposits)
-Oil Pan (I know you said you did it, but just double check it, a rear main seal can look like the back edge of the pan so just verify it's not the pan)
-Oil Cooler Gasket (the oil cooler along the backside of the engine on the driver's side can sometime seep oil from the gasket)
-Oil Filter post (not super common, but I have run into a few 5VZ-FEs where the center post on the oil filter mount gets a little loose so the filter doesn't fully seal itself, just snug it up if it's loose)
-Power Steering Pump (I am not sure if you can still buy the reseal kits for these, but they aren't too bad to rebuild.)
By the way, is this how the front driveshaft connection is supposed to look? Wondering about the metal piece just sticking out there. Thanks.
That's an aftermarket U-Joint, so the position of the zerk fitting is normal for that. Toyota tends to tuck their zerk fittings on serviceable u-joints in the middle on the "smaller" drive shafts (the 2nd gen Tundra, Sequoia, and LC200's have them on the edge like that).
