[Toadie77]

Hello~

I'm a new Rav4 owner 1996 4-door with stock motor and Auto trans. I'm living in Japan right now, so I was hoping to get some help from your forum.

I was getting ready to change the oil, and I noticed that I had some type of fluid leaking under the car. It is to the drivers side of the oil pan (looks like the trans / differential area). The leak is coming from the rear of the square pan next to the oil pan and looks exactly like used oil. I do not think it is motor oil because when I use the dip stick the motor oil looks “cleaner”. Could it be transmission fluid?? FYI, My oil level has been fine so far, but I was changing it to synthetic.

I have about 50k miles on it but otherwise it seems to run fine for me.

Would it be worth it to order a shop manual? Any ideas on what could be leaking / how to check the Trans oil level etc would help. (the owners manual is entirely in Japanese).

I did try a quick search, but sorry if this topic has been covered and I missed it.

Thanks!
Greg

 

[dnylrq]

Sounds like your transmission pan has a leak. I would clean around the entire pan first, and then try to pinpoint the leak. I would guess that it would probably be from the pan gasket, but without seeing it, who knows.
If you plan on working on your RAV yourself, I would definitely get the toyota manual. I got one on shipment right now, and I know the Haynes manual is pretty lousy.
Hope some of this helped.

 

[Toadie77]

Thanks~

Yeah, that is what I figured. I would like to fix it myself, and if it is the pan gasket it doe not look difficult, but do you have a source for online parts / gaskets that is good? Where did you pick up your Rav4 manual?

Greg

 

[dnylrq]

For the gasket, I would just go to autozone or something of the like and get the gasket. I would also change the filter why you have the pan down. It would probably come as a filter and gasket set. Autozone does have a filter, I just checked online, so that would probably be your best bet. Unless you want to pay Toyota price :wink:
For now, just pick up the Haynes manual it's only $15 and its good for any basic things you'll end up doing to the RAV. The Toyota manual, you might as well just check ebay for the Toyota Service Manual. They are year specific, and only come in book form. That CD stuff is a joke.

 

[Toadie77]

Thanks for the help. I'll get the parts and the book and try to get it done one day on the weekend. I'll try to take some pictures and let you know how it goes.

Greg

 

[Chucks97]

My story may or may not help any of you...but here goes.

For the first 155k miles of out Rav's life we have been running Dino 10W-30. Last week I decided to swap it over to Mobil! synthetic(the full synthetic blend) I then found oil leaking out from about the same area you described at at the rate of loosing about 1/2 quart in a week. I had to switch it back due to the smaller Synthetic molecules being able to sneak past gakets/seals that held the Dino in check.

I had made the swap over to Synthetic on our other 3 vehicles all of which have at least 134k miles . I had no problems with leaks on these vehicals after I made the change.