Hi All,
Just recently picked up a 2008 Jeep Gran Cherokee CRD with the OM642. Unfortunately the used car dealer had no service records or maintenance history. This was a 1 owner car though, and was a trade-in. I do have a small oil leak, that needs to be investigated further. As far as I can eyeball, it is somewhere from the middle to rear of the engine. The bell housing seems dry. First thought Oil cooler seals.

Questions:

1. From what I've read these tend to fail in the 70-80k mile range. Have any of you had these fail much later than that? Say at the 148K miles like I have now?

2. I have not been able to find consensus on when MB/Jeep may have addressed this in production maybe 2012? Any idea of when service shops may have switched from the orange seals to the viton purple ones?

3. I'm trying to assess whether this job may have already been done on mine given the mileage. Or possibly have been serviced, but replaced orange with orange seals sometime in it's life and they are now due again...arrrg.

Luckily the leak is currently small. I have also noticed that the intake tube has been upgraded to the newer style with the black seal, and the turbo area seems to be fairly dry and oil free, so the PO has had some work done on this engine, just not sure how much.

Any advice or insight before I have to tear into this further would be appreciated. I will be doing an oil change, and while at it will have the lower cover off and may be able to better assess the source of the leak, or at leas clean up the area to monitor down the road. Just curious as to what other have experienced when buying a higher mileage OM642 and what types of leaks they encountered.

TIA

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Stable Mates:
1987 300TD 310K mi (Hans)
2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee OM642 165k mi (Benzrokee)