I was quoted 1250 for a repair for a timing cover reseal. Is this a defect on the Gen 3

that's about right, but you can usually ignore it

are you getting any oil under the car?

 

A common nuisance defect, but, likely not a recall worthy defect. The leak is small enough most ignore it, especially if outside the warranty coverage period. I'm approaching 213K miles and have no plans to fix it.

 

there are lots of people here with the issue, and many thread. most ignore, unless it happens under warranty

i think it's just a defective gasket, but the engine has to come out to get to it, iirc.

 

@heyphillip believe it or not, that's about the best price I've seen mentioned here. More typical is $1700~2200

If you want to get an idea how bad it is, take off the front/right wheel, and a few of the fasteners holding the plastic panel at the back of the wheel well. Then you can see the driveshaft pulley (with no attachments, the engine oil filter housing and bottom of the timing chain cover.

 

I was quoted $1700 for the job over 4 years ago at ~95 k miles. I had the extended warranty so it was covered, but if it wasn’t, I would have just left it be and monitored it.

Seepage isn’t worth the price.

 

There's absurdly detailed diagrams in the Repair Manial, on how to place the form-in-place gasket. The instructions say to apply it to the engine face, and that's not happening.

The instructions say to apply the bead typically around ~3mm diameter, and to increase to around ~5 mm diameter at the 3 split-line zones. Very specific. And also to put localized lateral beads at the split lines.

Then reinstall the cover, within 3 minutes of commencing with the FIP gasket application.

Then install all the bolts, twenty five of them, and torque them all (there are differing torque values), within a further 7 minutes. So 10 minutes in total, from the time you start applying the gasket, to everything back in place and all bolts correctly torqued.

Or start all over...

 

any noticeable problem with the struts when driving?

how many miles on her?

 

To do that timing cover it is almost required to pull the ICE. The job of pulling the ICE sounds intimidating, but it’s not. The water pump is 5 bolts, The exhaust manifold is 13. The motor mount is 6. The bellhousing is 8. This is going by memory, so I may not be exact.

After you pull it once or four times (like I have), it can be done in a couple of hours. When I first started pulling mine for the first time, I thought “It will be a miracle if this thing ever runs again”. Just take your time and watch everything.

 

Do you leave the intake manifold on? Or could you?

 

You can leave the intake on. Or off.