The right rear oil seal on my 92 4runner is leaking. Not a big surprise as I have 310,000 miles. My mechanic did the left side last year and had a hell of a time (I bought the car with it fried and I think that may be why it so difficult). The local mechanic here in my small colorado town wants $600, holy crapamoli. I've done plenty of wrenching and think I'll tackle this myself. Any advice out there? What makes this repair so difficult and expensive?

 

Its really not that hard of a job. Not extremely time consuming either. It can easily be done in a couple of hours. The intake plenum needs to come off. Take good pics of all the vac lines! Once the plenum is off, remove the valve cover, rear seal retainer plate, and cam 'bearing'. Make sure the cam lobes are NOT compresing the springs on the # 6 cylinder before you loosen the 'bearing'. clean everything real good, set new seal in place, finger tighten seal retainer, use FIPG on cam 'bearing', torrque to specs, tighten retainer plate, reinstall vavle cover and plenum.