Good thread. Now my turn. it is leaking and both sides of transmission and not atf. I noticed the housing had a bit of oil around it so i used engine cleaner around it and all over transmission and tightened it a bit. Not a drop for a few days then a puddlle underneath and dripping from my skid plate passenger side. Cleaned it again and no more puddle just a tiny bit dripping from skidplate again. but oil lvl isn't changing. i do get an odor when driving but minimal and not always.
Next i seen a few upgrading to Dorman aluminum. Now i live north of Montreal in a small country town so we get cold winters. 1 garage says to stay with original and not go to aluminum, but I'm still checking and 1 mechanic says i could upgrade it to aluminum so at a loss. NOTE ! i went and changed only the cover for an aluminum and it's tight and hasn't leaked from there. also i got a quote and ouch!. but in the quote they don't only change the the housing and cooler but also the fluid temperature sensor and the unit oil pressure sensor ? they are fine so are they trying to make $$$ more from me ?
But i'me gonna put some oil stop leak when it goes down temporarely just to see if it changes.


Oh My JK only has 80 k, klm but 10 years old.

 

whether you go aluminum (many brands out there now), stay factory, or go with a different plastic brand, it's all a completely crapshoot. as you've seen commented above, a lot of the times it can simply be the o-rings and not the units themselves, but it's decent bit of work to get in there just to get eyeballs on things.

When it comes to sensors, I almost ALWAYS stick with factory, but when I was faced with purchasing an aluminum replacemnet oil cooler that came with the two sensors installed in it, I weighed that decision. I ended up installing that as-is with the aftermarket sensors rather than removing the factory sensors from my old one and installing in the new one. I've seen several people that had those specific factory sensors fail, including a friend, and I just decided I'd go with new aftermarket rather than old original factory ones. I'd likely just opt for a new unit that comes with sensors installed.

I really feel like stop-leak is a pipe dream when it comes to this particular problem, but it is cheap and doesn't hurt. it is a very tight space down down in that engine valley, but if you have an endoscope you might be able to get a glimpse of how much oil is really pooled in the valley. I have a cheap one that just plugs into my phone (i hate having a stand alone unit that i have to charge when using few and far between) and it works great. Something like this -

https://a.co/d/cz3dZ29

If you are remotely handy, this is not a terrible DIY job and would save you a lot of money. I personally don't think I'd put much weight into what local shops are recommending unless they are offroad specific shops that are seeing these jeeps and this issue constantly.