This damn Cherokee! Between this, the bad lower control arm bushing, a suspected bad drive shaft bearing, the winter tires and summer tires all at the wear markers, and the radio acting up again, I'm really thinking about trading it in.

While looking at the driveshaft, I notice a pretty good oil leak under the engine on the drivers front side. Feels like engine oil, but I haven't checked the transmission fluid level yet. I hope that's not it, but it would explain the noise I'm hearing. Looking up top, the passenger side of the engine and the top of the trans are oily. It looks to be coming from under the intake manifold. Looking from the passenger side, I've got puddles of coolant around the bottom of where the oil filter assembly mounts.

Do you think the oil is from the oil filter assembly, and can that leak coolant as well? Or am I looking at intake gasket failure or worse?

 

Digging through YouTube and seeing that the housing incorporates an oil/coolant heat exchange, I'm now convinced that I need to pull the intake and replace the oil filter housing. The good news is that the coolant bottle doesn't have oil, and the dipstick looks good.

 

usually when you have coolant or oil in that area (they don't have to mix), it's the oil cooler that is part of the oil filter housing. not that hard to replace, just get the metal one if you need to replace it and you can do your spark plugs at the same time. I'm waiting for mine to start failing as well to do the same, but this is a common problem on these V6 engines regardless what vehicle they are on.

 

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion and realization that I should have proactively replaced the oil filter housing when I did the plugs last year.

Amazon has all-metal kits that include new temp sensors and a couple of oil filters for as cheap as $49. Is the quality of the Dorman version for $187 really that much better? The reviews ratings are pretty similar.

$49
$187

 

the $49 is most likely some chinese knockoff, that I wouldn't trust on mine.