Took my car in today about an oil leak. They confirmed what i expected. It was the rear main seal. It has been leaking about a month now. I had the tranny replaced a year ago and I really feel that the seal was not as good as the original. When I asked about it they said that seal was not replaced or touched during my tranny replacement. How could that be??? Anyhow they want $1000 bucks to do the job at the dealer. Any suggestions?

 

Find a good independent shop ASAP! Dealers are OK for warranty work, oil changes, brakes and other small stuff, but for major jobs an independent shop is the better way to go. If you want to drive to Covina, CA I can give you the name of a good shop.
Dan

 

Safe to assume you are out of warranty?

 

60000 miles

 

Well, they wouldn't touch it because the rear main seal is behind the flywheel and they would have to take it completly off to remove the seal.

I still can't believe that it went out after only 60K miles. I would complain to Acura (not the dealer) and if you have taken in your car for service to your dealer all the time, then they could replace it under what they like to call "Good Will." Meaning if your car has been well maintained by a deal and there is record of this, then they sould either do it for free or give you a bomb ass deal. I hope this helps.

 

Boy, with that much invested in your car, you don't have much choice but to have it fixed. I would try a good independent shop. I got luck and found a couple of guys who specialize in Honda/Acura. They worked for years at on of the local dealers and got tired of the dealer bullshit and opened their own shop. They use only Honda parts but don't charge honda prices (and they have loaner cars). Hopefully you can find one around where you live.

BTW, how much is it leaking? Is it causing any other problems?

 

Just curious!!! Were you running with synthetic tranny fluid or engine oil? I've heard from several souces that some synthetic motor oils and fluids can cause seal failure. Not sure if this is true but worth checking into.

 

Wasn't there a TSB on the rear seal for all Honda V6 in MY2001?

You might want to check out alldata.com


Edit: I just looked it up -- TSB 01-041 engine oil leaks. I thought it had to do with the rear main seal. It might be worth it for you to try to dig up the text on this one.

 

Myth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

This is the EXACT reason why I always go to the dealer for the scheduled 15K, 30K, 45K…. etc services.
If something like this happens, you’re much more likely to have the rules bent in your favor after the warranty is expired.

Shawn S

 

STOP this crap right here ,,, synthetic oil can Not cause any seals on new cars to fail,,, there are tests that have verified this (MANY)

 

On older cars, synthetic's don't cause oil leaks, they just find them. My 2000 Wrangler is a good example ... never leaked until I put synthetic in it ... switched back, I still have a slight leak from the valve cover gasket but not as pronounced as with synthetic. Same with my old Cadillac, as soon as I went to synthetic, it started leaking oil. I'm sure the leaks were there before, it's just that the synthetics seem to leak more then conventional oil.

 

Actually, it doesn't matter if they maintained your vehicle on schedule or not. Most of the time, I get the feeling that they would blame anyone but themselves and try to get you to pay first. Even mod installs guaranteed by the dealer don't mean jack shit because when your suspension joints go bad, they will most likely say its your fault and they aren't liable for it.

The very strange thing I've witnessed in the past is that if you baby your car, it will break on you more frequently than if you were to use the car like it was being QA tested. I hate it when I baby the fuck out of my car and something stupid goes wrong..like engine quirks.

 

Here's a good article on synthetics that describes what I said a little better then I did.

 

This is exactly what I've read and also been told by a dealer. The dealer said that a lot of their services related to oil leaks have had one thing in common; customer had been running synthetic oil. Maybe they are just trying to push Honda oil or maybe there's something to it - I don't know.

 

Synthetic oil will clean out the burnt hydocarbons out of the pin hole leaks that are already there. Also I found that by just tighting down the valve covers to the proper specs has stoped seapage (on older cars). I put amsoil synthetic into my older mini van and had leakage problems,,, valve covers were finger tight as were the oil pan gaskets. I tighten them up and no more leaks. The benifits of having synthetics far outway having to fix the loose nuts.

 

Mobil 1 synthetic......very interesting.

 

No luck on the good will. Also I laughed my ass off when the advisor told me the supercharger MAY have added extra stress to the seal. What an idiot. They are looking for excuses not to help me out. They have always treated me well in the past.

 

I am working with a case manager from Honda now so wish me luck.

 

Wanted to update you all on this. First Thanks for all your suggestions. I was able to work with an awesome case manager at customer care. To make a long story short, everything was fixed under the "goodwill" policy. I had to pay 2 hours labor out of pocket for the extra time they had to spend moving the supercharger to perform the work. Not a bad deal because the original estimate was close to $1000. I was really happy with Acura's service on this issue.

 

Wow that's awesome!

 

That's right... Honda/Acura will do things under goodwill if you do bring your car in for service. I have a 92 Accord (this generation was subject to sudden distributor failure due to a faulty igniter) and the dealership did the whole service for the car at 93,000 miles even though the warranty expired at 36,000. At 150,000 miles, they did another goodwill service after they found out that they forgot to replace an engine seal after the 90K timing belt service.

 

isn't that considered power train? and isn't 60k miles still included with the extended warranty that Honda Issued all our cars?