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Oil cooler leaking (05 Canadian X-Trail SE)

57K views 72 replies 14 participants last post by  awolf65 
#1 ·
Hey guys

After a long road trip and parking the car I could smell burning oil which I thought was weird so i investigated... turns out my oil cooler is leaking...

did a little research on it online and lots of threads suggested it's a common problem for nissan's that the 0-Ring inside the oil cooler fails and all you need to do is replace it... great... should be rather easy fix...

Called Nissan (locally in Edmonton) and they told me they dont sell that o-ring only... instead I have to buy the whole unit.... for $660!!!!

I googled some more and found out it's just a typical "O" ring.... my question to you guys.... as anyone had this issue with their oil cooler?

If the weather holds out this weekend, I might disassemble the unit and see what my findings are... hopefully it is indeed just a basic O ring and I can source one out somewhere locally and not spend 600+ dollars....
 
#59 ·
Here we are May 2019 and I am another 2005 XTrail with oil burning and smoking. My driveway is a mess. I was told I needed a new valve cover gasket so Nissan did it. The next morning there was more oil on the driveway. When I phoned Nissan they said perhaps it was the oil cooler. I am glad I found this thread or they would have had me buying a new oil cooler! Thanks to you all I now know to go to my mechanic and show him the part numbers and get my o rings replaced. Wish me luck!
 
#60 ·
Good luck. If you can print him out the breakdown diagram with the torque specs. If its any consolation its a fairly common problem in Rogue models and second gen X trails which were never sold in Canada. Solution for those as well is a gasket replacement. If your mechanic has a nitrile gasket set, he might just have the smaller one already on hand. Otherwise, you will have to get the part numbers here and get them from a dealer parts dept.
Fix is still working fine on mine-- no oil leaks whatsoever.
 
#61 ·
Hi all, just have had the oil cooler leaking oil problem diagnosed on our daughter's 2006 X-Trail (Bona Vista) with 280,00 Km on it, so will be ordering the O-rings and gasket per this thread's instructions. Thanks for all the good information, was not looking forward to the estimated $1100 "replace" bill...
 
#62 ·
Local dealer had all parts in stock so will be heading out to my friend's place tomorrow because he has a drive-on hoist, which should make things much easier. Also, the 21334-30F00 small O-ring (#6 in the Oil Cooler maintenance drawing) has been replaced by Nissan part # 21334-30F0A. Hopefully the leak does not become a torrent, his shop is 90 miles/145 Km away from here...
 
#64 ·
We looked at this yesterday with a mirror and couldn't see any oil on/around the cooler, but we do see a wet oil pan, going to use my borescope camera to look again. Maybe that method is what the garage mechanics used to diagnose the problem, we'll see. This looks like a terrible place to get to, we took the passenger wheel and the inner fender liner off, but everything is still very tight space wise and hard to get in there. I could see a tiny bit of oil (on top of the cooler) using the borescope but no oil coming out when the car is running, going to hold off for a while to make sure that is what the real problem is...
 
#65 ·
I'll add to this thread that I realize started several years ago. I am still working on a Canadian '06 X-Trail (T-30) that I bought in June 2019 at a local Nissan dealer's wholesale lot. The project has turned out to take more time, and money, than I had originally hoped. I am just now working on the oil cooler that has the very common oil leak from worn out seals in the unit itself. Nissan considers that part to be non-serviceable so does not list the two seals for it, which in essentially all cases are the only source of oil leakage from the oil cooler, along occasionally with the flat gasket that seals the lower oil cooler housing to the block. I have never found any gasket/seal source that specifically lists seals for the T30 X-Trail oil cooler even though those two seals were also used on other Nissan models from the years about 2003-2007. So if you look up seals for the oil coolers of the Xterra, Pathfinder, Sentra of that era, and even for the much older Stanza, you can find the correct seals.
The large seal that is between the upper cooling unit and the lower, machined base is a Stone 211-0706, also available as an Ishino JH-07275. The replacement seal is about 2 mm thicker than the worn-out seal in the oil cooler and although the new seal is flat with a slight bevel edge it does not have the distorted shape of that worn-out seal. The small seal that fits in a groove in the special, hollow bolt that holds the two parts of the oil cooler together is actually an o-ring when new but when removed from a worn oil cooler will be flattened and not able to properly seal the top of the oil cooler. That small seal/o-ring is a Stone 211-0707, also available as an Ishino JK-09603. In Canada you can get them at NAPA (as essentially the Stone part number, although they may be special order) but they probably will be in stock at Altrom, where I bought mine. Altrom has outlets in many major Canadian cities and although Altrom states on their web site that they are wholesale only they sold to me essentially as retail with no questions. I can guarantee that Altrom will pretty certainly have the best prices ($7.04 and $1.02 CDN plus tax). These seals can be obtained from other sources such as Amazon for fairly ridiculously high prices.
Removing, and reinstalling, that X-Trail oil cooler is probably the most miserable operation on a vehicle I've ever done. The oil cooler unit is on the lower left back of the block (standing at the front of the car), technically on the front, lower right side of the transverse-mounted engine. It is partially obstructed by the high pressure line from the power steering pump to the rack and also blocked somewhat by the exhaust pipe that runs under the engine. Some people prefer to disconnect one or both of those parts and that will make the job a little easier but it is still a real pain. The Nissan service manual says to drain the cooling system but I used special purpose hose clamp pliers on the hoses, and then, after disconnecting the coolant lines, I plugged the ends with rubber stoppers to stop the slow dribble of coolant that does leak in spite of the clamps. I replaced the spring-type hose clamps for those hoses (a real joy to try to get at and open enough to remove the coolant lines) with the gear-type, screw band clamps. I had some appropriate gasket material and fabricated the gasket that seals the oil cooler to the block.
 
#66 ·
Precious information, thank you.

Looks like mine is leaking but not droping on the driveway.
I ll wait until it drops. I m considering change it next fall or winter if things get worse with it.

I have in mind a Subaru crosstrek ,6 speeds manual sport package.
 
#67 ·
Just completed this horrendous task (no hoist)

Performing this task is only for those who are either brave or stupid, I can’t decide which category I’m in, but use a paint crayon to mark the positions of the hoses and the removable parts! You don’t need to ask me why about the paint crayon, you’ll find out soon enough if you don’t! First, you must be aware that Nissan does not sell any rebuild kits for these up to year 2006 X-Trail machines, for some crazy reason only complete engine oil coolers. The next thing is to realize that you have to disconnect the negative battery terminal, remove the right side front wheel (North America) and then the plastic inner fender cover. Drain the coolant and the power steering fluid, use a 24mm socket on the rear of the power steering pump, high pressure side (arrange many rags or paper towels to collect the fluids that will leak out). This will be followed by removing the engine air intake system, and after that remove the upper engine oil cooler hose clamps and attach a recovery string to the upper coolant hoses. You do this string thing because you will need to route the hoses close to the engine block and above the knock sensor wires, exactly the way they were routed originally, as I needed a helper to tension the string on the reinstall journey. If this hose routing is not correct (use some tape to keep them together) you will have a devil of a time trying to put the cooler assembly back in. The original hoses were damaged by oil so we bought new ones, thus had to route them correctly, and had one nasty time trying to figure out why the cooler would not fit against the block properly. When reinstalling, you need to be very creative about torquing the cooler to engine 12mm head bolts, I used my 3/8 inch drive and my ¼ inch drive torque wrenches and a combination of short and deep 12 mm sockets because there is not a lot of room. You have to be just as creative when you reattach the high pressure power steering hose (I used 2 new copper washers). As far as the engine oil cooler gasket to the engine block goes, likely you can just tighten those 4 12mm bolts down with a ratchet but I was worried about that metal cooler to block compression gasket, so I foolishly spent many hours figuring out ways to use torque wrenches! I refilled the power steering and coolant systems with brand new fluids, ran the machine (X-Trail Bona Vista) for 20 minutes, then we drove it up to my daughter’s, she’ll drive it for a week and we’ll find out if there are any problems. This was a very challenging repair for me, even though I have tons of tools, but unfortunately no hoist……
 
#68 ·
If you were going to replace the heater hose lines to and from the oil cooler, which I did unfortunately AFTER my first reinstalling of the oil cooler because the original hoses had, with many years of use, lost their grip on the cooler connectors and so I had coolant leaks, the smartest thing is to cut the two new hose lines a little longer than the length you think you will need (and of course they won't have the pre-formed bends in them so you have to be creative about how long they should be and decide on an acceptable routing of the hoses), you can feed the lines down to the area of the cooler, clamp them on the oil cooler connectors, bolt on the oil cooler, and then reconnect the two hoses to the two places under the intake air hose (with it removed as you did) after cutting off any excess. Another potential issue is that the actual oil cooler unit (the top part) is made of fairly thin plated brass and the connectors for the coolant hoses are very easily distorted depending on what type of hose clamp you use. I made the mistake of using screw-type band clamps and even though I thought I was being very careful in how much I tightened them I badly regret that decision. The original clamps were a pain to remove so I now have bought better replacements which will put equal pressure around the hoses and with the snow in my driveway largely gone and daytime temps not too bad I'll be back at the stupid thing. As far as the OEM gasket/seal that is between the main, lower, oil cooler section and the block it is actually a painted piece of thin sheet metal (and I don't think even stainless) and there was no way I was going to trust that so I went through my varied collection of gasket material and cut a suitable replacement and coated it with a thin layer of classic Permatex Form-A-Gasket. You probably could get by using one of the new Permatex silicone gasket makers (which of course now replace many of the old traditional gaskets on oil pans, rocker arm covers, etc.) but the ports from the oil cooler to the block are pretty close to the edge of the oil cooler casting and I would worry about getting just enough silicone on the face to seal well without having some ooze over to partially obscure the ports when you do the initial partial torquing of the four mounting bolts.
There is no question that oil cooler is a curse and I don't know why Nissan has always insisted that the oil cooler on the T30 XTrail is not serviceable when every other Nissan oil cooler has Nissan OEM (and after market) replacement seals. That top oil cooler unit is (like the two seals) actually shared with several other Nissan models and can be bought separately (the base will obviously outlast the vehicle so you'd never replace it).
 
#69 ·
Hi DFSpencer, I had not originally planned on replacing the hoses, but when I pulled the whole assembly out the hoses at the cooler end were obviously going to be problematic so I ordered new ones from the dealer. In retrospect I should have ordered 12 feet of 1/2 inch heater hose from just about anyone for about $50 and then cut them to length, which would have been much cheaper and easier to install. Also, I ordered new OEM clamps from the Nissan dealer but only used them at the oil cooler connections, the top connections I used screw types because it is difficult to connect/reconnect or it seemed so to me. Was too timid to try gasket sealer, used a new metal gasket between the cooler and engine block, it is some kind of special crush type gasket, I was really scared of getting dirt on it because you can't see too well to clean the block side. Cleaning I used quite a lot of "Spray Nine" detergent, Canadian Tire non chlorinated brake cleaner and many of those blue paper cloth shop rags. Torqueing down some of those (12mm head) bolts on the cooler base was sort of a pain, but was successful in the end. Thanks for adding more information, I wish there had been more before I started on this nasty project, hopefully we can help some others with this added info. Happy X-Trails...
 
#70 ·
I considered buying the proper hoses but figured they would be expensive and decided that half inch (ID) heater hose would do although I assume the OEM hoses are 12 mm inside, so a little under a millimetre tighter than half inch heater hose. What surprised me was how hard it was to find 1/2 inch heater hose around here. I went to a lot of professional suppliers of car and truck parts and finally one had about 24 feet that they agreed to sell me for about $25 as I recall, obviously more than I needed but the price was right.
You clearly took the time and were really meticulous so everything should work out well. Actually I would suggest that the next time you need to take greasy dirt, etc. off a car part grab the WD-40 first. WD-40 is an amazing product and also probably the safest thing you'll use when working on a vehicle. WD-40 does not have concerning health effects and when your hands are gross with dirty grease/oil an initial cleaning with WD-40 will make the task of getting your hands clean a whole lot easier. It is also the only thing I've discovered that easily removes Permatex silver Anti-Seize paste from your hands or tools, etc. I do not buy the aerosol can form of WD-40 but instead the liquid that I put in a spray bottle. The propellant used in the aerosol can is far more of a concern than the WD-40 itself.
 
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