3 New Gearbox Oil Seals - Still Leaking - Help!!

Hi all,

We’ve been banging our heads (and wallets!) against a brick wall with this for months and could really use some help from the many knowledgeable forum members out there.

The short story...

My usual mechanic (a really good and I believe very competent guy) has replaced the gearbox/tailshaft oil seal on our 2006 automatic Jimny twice and a transmission specialist has replaced it once and we still can’t stop it leaking.

The (very) long story...

We bought the car 18 months ago, after trying various things to stop a terrible wobble, I came on here and found it was the classic death wobble and got the king pin bearings done and it was all good. Thanks very much for the excellent death wobble thread by the way, it really helped us out a lot.

Shortly after that there was a kind of chattering from under the car on the over run. Took it to the garage and after getting opinions from three different places, my mechanic said it was the transfer case so we got a second hand one and the problem was fixed and it drove perfectly.

A few days later, horrific juddering and vibrations started suddenly - a gearbox mount had broken and the universal joint in the tail shaft had gone. As has been discussed before on this forum, the standard choice is to get a whole new shaft from Suzuki, in our case for $600 with a 3 month wait (we’re in Tasmania, Australia) but it is possible to replace them so my mechanic sent the tail shaft to a transmission specialist to get the UJs replaced and he replaced the gearbox/tailshaft oil seal (with a non Suzuki part) for the first time.

It still wasn’t right after this work and developed a deep, non death wobble related vibration at 76 kph (I guess this is the Jimny’s natural resonance speed) and upon inspecting the other prop shafts for a third time it seemed two more UJ’s had now gone (can’t honestly remember which ones, I’ve had over 20 trips to the mechanic in the last 6 months!).

Again it still wasn’t right with the deep vibration still starting at 76 kph and going out at about 85 kps and it was leaking from the newly replaced oil seal.

The mechanic had noticed the dampening weight on the cross member had been removed so he put another weight from a different car on there to see if it made any difference to the vibration as we were worried this is what was causing the oil seal to fail. It made a small difference but didn’t fix it but the oil seal was replaced for the second time, this time with a more flexible latex one, with plans to try to fine tune the dampening weight size and position to try to eliminate the vibration. All the 6 month old wheels were also balanced and checked to make sure they were running true, no significant issues.

The new oil seal didn’t fix the leak, so the tail shaft went back to the transmission guys to redo the UJ and double check the shaft was balanced and that the (sorry don’t know the name) shaft/union in the gearbox that the tail shaft mates with was not damaged or out of true after the UJ and gearbox mount failures and it was all fine. This time the transmission specialists also replaced the oil seal but still no difference, it’s still vibrating horribly at 76 kph and still leaking oil exactly as it was.

We’re now really running out of ideas. If the vibration causes the oil seal to fail, it must damage it and it is then not oil tight because the car still leaks oil even when it’s only been driven around town and therefor without reaching the 76 kph vibration zone.

So really any and all input on this would genuinely be hugely gratefully received, this has been going on for months now and is driving us mad!

Thanks in advance.

i've had a similar issue. just changed the small prop between the gearbox and transfer box. the ju was shafted on mine. i guess any imbalance in the prop will ruin the rear oil seal. i suppose its possible that the gearbox output shaft bearing may have worn

It could be the prop itself, there was a recall by Suzuki due to a seal in the prop failing and letting oil out, if ignored it wrecked gearboxes

robs5230 and j999pre – thanks very much for your thoughts guys, it's appreciated.

I totally agree it's the propshaft that's suspicious but what exactly can be wrong with it?

The failed UJ was replaced then replaced again along with the other UJ in the shaft just to make sure and the propshaft was tested for runout/balance, so ruling out visible damage, I guess it could be…

The balance/runout tolerance the transmission guys accept as ok is larger than Suzuki spec and Jimnys are so light everything affects them?

UJ repairs on these "disposable" shafts just don't work that well?

Match marks weren't used before taking the shaft off so it went back on differently and we're now out of wack? I think putting it on the same way you take it off is pretty standard for any propshaft (?) but the Suzuki works manual makes a big deal of this.

j999pre do you know what Suzuki changed in the propshafts when they recalled them? There was no leaking prior to having the various work done with ours so it seems like it was once ok.

Thanks again.

my rear oil seal started to leak around the time that the rear gearbox mount failed.

get rid,I have never known a car that has so many problems at such low mileages,particularly the post 2005 models.Dont know if its just bad design,shoddy matierials, or what,check out the forum,the number of owners that have had problems,leaking oil seals,failed crankshaft pulleys,gearbox bearings,mostlt on comparatively low mileage cars.Its a pity as the car has loads of character,but to keep a car that spends more time being repaired then being driven is pointless.I have a 2008 vvt ,with 32,000 miles on the clock,and have suffered crankshaft pulley failure,leaking rear gearbox oil seal or propshaft,still not sure which,worn gearbox bearings,which I have just had replaced,I have already upset forum members once when I said these things should not be happening on a car with 3200 miles on the clock,and no doubt will upset them again now when I say I think they are crap.regardless of how good they are off road,just seems like a never ending money pit.