Jeep Wrangler Pentastar 3.6 V6 Oil Filter Housing Upgrade

The Pentastar V6 is used on a lot of Chrysler/FCA/Stellantis products from about 2011 onwards. As with most vehicles, the oil filter housing eventually does leak as the O-rings used to seal them against the engine will flatten out and develop leaks. Additionally, the factory plastic housing tends to degrade from heat cycles and in some cases can even crack. This should be viewed as a standard maintenance item on many engines that can typically be found on vehicles over 4 years or 80,000kms old. Accessing the oil filter housing is not exactly easy though as due to packaging, they put it in the valley of the V in the engine. This means the intake manifolds need to be removed to access and clean up the area. The cooling system also needs to be flushed and the fuel injectors need to be disconnected for proper access.

Dorman Upgrade (926-959)

It's a labour intensive process so while the simplest repair is to replace just the gaskets, we recommend doing the filter housing upgrade to prolong the service interval of this oil filter housing. The concern is that you remove everything only to realize you have a cracked housing in which case the seals won't be good enough to repair the vehicle and the vehicle is stuck. The aluminum upgrade from Dorman is a popular solution for these vehicles as it's much stronger and unlikely to get cracked when installing/removing an oil filter. The kit is all inclusive and comes with new manifold gaskets and all the oil cooler o-rings. 

While You're In There...

Because this is a fairly labour intensive job with a lot of removal, as mentioned it's a good time to do your oil change and coolant flush. Additionally we also replaced the spark plugs at the same time as accessing the spark plugs also requires intake manifold removal.