Taking a corner Sunday I heard this grinding noise, i straightened the car out and about 3 seconds later I felt this hard jolt from the passenger side. At first, I thought I ran over something, but there was nothing to run over. So i pull over I look under my car, oil was dripping out, very very black oil. My first conclusion was that it was the transmission. The oil was leaking between where the trans. bolts up to the motor. So I get back in the car, start it up and try to see if the clutch will engage so I could get it out of the middle of the road. There was a very loud grind noise but the clutch seemed to engage fine. I quickly cut the car off and called a tow truck. When the yow truck gets there and proceeds to put my car on the bed, he managed to crack my front lip.

The next day Sutton Acura calls and says that they found that it was the rear main seal to the motor. WTF! I explained to them that if it was the rear main seal then there would be no grinding noise and that i had checked my motor oil the day before and it was far from being black. They said they would double check and call me back. 4 hours later they called back and told me that it was the rear main seal and that they could not find a 'grinding noise' (lying bastards) and that the oil had been contaminated b/c it was outside of the motor. What do you guys think about this?

 

Usually rear main seals dont leak that much oil and dont completely fail at once - they start leaking slowly and it gets worse over time.

 

Ouch!

I never heard of a rear main seal just failing like that... strange.

Are you going to let the dealer fix it?

 

yeah i dont trust anyone around here, not even the dealership...but they have corp. backing. They want $460 for the entire job

 

$460 for the rear main seal sounds CHEAP

 

what i dont understand is how a busted rear main seal can make a grinding noise in my transmission. I think the dealership is just trying to **** me

 

so they've pulled both axles and are verifying that nothing is leaking from the transmission?

you sure you didn't just ding your pan?

 

Its definitely not your tranny though........if it was tranny oil it would be rather clear. Sounds like its def motor related though due to the color of the fluid/oil you described dripping!

 

what i would really like to know what jolted when the problem occured. To my knowledge the rear main seal busting wouldnt make the engine/tranny jolt like it did (correct me if im wrong). My motor oil was clear the day before, so i dont know why it would be black a day later, unless it got dirty from the error that occured.

Anyway, the dealership called and knocked $50 off the total...so its only $410.xx, but i have to wait until tomorrow for my paycheck Oh well get to drive the Benz around until then

 

Bad input shaft bearing maybe? That would causing some grinding noise, especially if its froze up. The leak could be from the shaft seal after the bearing went bad if thats the case.

 

you have to pay $4xx for warranty work? regardless, it's way cheaper than what you would have to pay. maybe take it to another dealership?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by nightrider &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you have to pay $4xx for warranty work? regardless, it's way cheaper than what you would have to pay. maybe take it to another dealership?</TD></TR></TABLE> im out of warranty

 

Rear main seal or tranny bearing, they're gonna have to drop the tranny either way. They should do that much and then tell you.

Maybe they should put it in gear and turn the wheels to see if it makes any audible chafing noises or is difficult to rotate.

Are you sure it's oil? Maybe the inboard joint blew up on one of the axles?

 

Wait a minute. How old is this post?