So after having my manual transmission rebuilt by AAMCO a year or so ago and only 22K miles since then, it just blew a pilot bearing.

They get it all apart and tell me that the issue was probably caused by the leak in the rear main seal (some oil spotting on my new clutch that they cleaned up) causing debrise to build up on the bearing to fail prematurely.

Sidebar - Now the reason why my engine was loosing about 1 quart every 3,000 miles presents itself since I was truly baffled with no leaks on driveway and no smoking going on.

AAMCO is telling me that they can clean it up and try to fix the seal, but that it really doesn't make a difference. WTF???? Really???

Someone tell me that I should have my head examined for even considering this crap idea since it should be just a simple new seal goes in and then the oil stays where it should before they put it all back together since as I understand it it's like 8-10 hours of intense labor to get at a stupid $10 part.

Yes/No???

If they have it all apart to clean it up and replace the pilot bearing, they should have replaced the seal if it was leaking.

Yes replace seal and no more leaks unless there is some other major problem.

Fortunately they were only an hour into putting it all back together so they were able to replace the RMS no problem.

Oddly enough they did say they found a leak coming from the oil pan gasket and that the oil pan itself was quite corroded. Not sure if it's because of the skid plate making it difficult to clean off dirt and other junk. Not sure why there wouldn't be oil leak spots under the vehicle after being parked for a while.

After all that though once the transmission was put back together again and going for a test drive they found there was a crunching/grinding downshifting from 2nd to 1st. In short a complete tranny tear down again since the blocker ring got fried from spinning and heating up from all the friction of it rubbing once the pilot bearing crapped out WAY prematurely...FML.

Fortunately they're going help me out by eating half the cost of labor (14+ hours in total), but still an fin' big bill nonetheless since I thought this was way behind me to get me well past the 200K mile mark with the last tranny rebuild.

After all that I think it's time to send her off after this, which sucks since it has less than 8K miles on Bilstein 5150's, brand new Swayaway HD torsion bars, brand new Wrangler Duratracs, new Gibson exhaust, and less than 20K miles on new timing belt, water pump, radiator flush, and spark plugs.