In the past year I've noticed a burning oil smell after driving the Jeep for some time. Given its mileage and the fact that I couldn't see any visual leaks from around the engine bay I suspected the leak was from the oil cooler which is a common failure point on the 3.6L Penestar engine. I had ordered a spare cooler a year ago in anticipation of this potentially happening so it was now time to get it done.
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| New OEM oil cooler assembly with sensors |
I dropped the car off with SJF so he could take care of this along with a laundry list of little maintenance items that has been on the backburner. One unfortunate discover after removing the intake manifold was the existence of an old mouse nest. That had to get cleaned out.
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| Little mouse nest |
Then, it was confirmed that there was indeed a small leak from the oil cooler that was just enough to pool some oil in the valley of the engine but not enough where it would drip off onto the side. It hadn't reached that catastrophic failure level yet that is well known among JK owners so I'm glad we got to this early. The old oil cooler was removed, replaced with a new OEM cooler I bought in late 2022 as a spare. New Fel-Pro gaskets were then applied to the intake manifold.
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| Confirmed oil under the oil cooler |
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| Fresh IM gaskets |
While he was in there I had him also replace the spark plugs with fresh NGK iridium plugs. Iridium is probably overkill here but I'm a big fan of these plugs in general.
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| Some of the old plugs |
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| New NGK SILZKR7B119723 plugs |
At this mileage I also suspected the PCV valve was on its way out so I got a new Mopar OEM PCV valve. The old one was definitely oily and getting some oil into the intake so I'm glad that was replaced.
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| New Mopar OEM PCV valve |
Since a little bit of coolant spilled during the removal of the old oil cooler, it was prudent to do a full oil change even though I just did one in the fall. Oil is cheap enough and it's not worth the risk of having contamination.
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| Some fresh Castrol Edge 5W-20 |
The battery is now also almost 8 years old and the negative terminal wasn't a snug fit anymore likely due to terminal corrosion over time. Don't want my wife getting stranded due to a dead battery so a fresh Duralast Platinum AGM battery went in. I have a preference for AGM to not have to deal with any spilling issues you might get from traditional lead acid batteries.
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| New Duralast Platinum AGM H6 battery |
I had also purchased some Delrin door hinge inserts from Quadratec last year. This really helps for both smooth door operation and also to make it easier to remove the doors if/when we want to. The old metal inserts were seized in there pretty hard. SJF definitely had to give it a bit of a beating to give up the ghost.
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| removing the door |
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| Old metal door hinge inserts |
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| Fresh Delrin inserts installed |
Maintenance Update:
Mileage: 79,228
- New OEM oil cooler, sensors and associated seals
- New OEM PCV valve
- New Fel-Pro intake manifold seals
- New Duralast Platium AGM H6 battery
- New Delrin door hinge bushings
- New set (6) NGK Laser Iridium SILZKR7B119723 spark plugs
- 5.5quarts Castrol Edge 5W-20
- New Mobil1 oil filter
- Top off coolant with Mopar OAT purple coolant
