My '03 STR has a slight oil leak, a few drops when I park it. Mechanic says it looks like the rear main seal is leaking and it's about 6 hours labor to fix it. I'm surprised since the car only has 68k miles. Is this common for this car? Are there any other possible causes I should check out?

 

Never heard of it but I am sure it could happen. I would inspect things very closely because the STR has a large under car pan and any fluid will pool in this a while before anything leaks out on the ground.
There have been reports of transmission cooler lines leaking so check that its engine oil and NOT transmission fluid. I would remove the under car pan and wipe down everything real good and then leave the pan off. Drive the car some more and try to put some clean white rags down on the floor where you park.

See if you can be sure of what color fluid is leaking. I have tried to attach a TSB about the transmission cooler pipes leaking but the crappy forum software will not allow it. It's TSB S307-05 if you can find it somewhere. If you get me your e-mail I can send it to you.
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Some vehicles are notorious for rear main seal leaks. We had a 2000 Lexus RX300 a few years back. The 1999 (first year of that model), 2000, and 2001 RX300s were built with flimsy rear main seals that tended to harden up and begin leaking between 70,000 and 75,000 miles. The Lexus forums were filled with RX owners complaining about this problem.

If your vehicle was reasonably maintained, Lexus stepped up to the plate and provided a redesigned rear main seal for you, even 10,000 miles past the warranty period. They did this as a matter of "good will" with their customers. Our RX developed the leak at about 72,000 miles. Lexus put the new seal on the vehicle for us and it continues to hold up today for the guy who bought this vehicle from us in early 2007. He is approaching 150,000 miles now.

Unfortunately, the transmission has to be dropped to get to many rear main seals these days. On our RX, it would have been a $1,200 out-of-pocket tab to replace a $20 seal as a result. I'm not surprised that your STR requires 6 hours of labor for this particular job.

Once those seals harden up, the probability of a leak climbs dramatically. The good news is that it takes a long time for most of these leaks to get worse and worse. If you know you have one, you can deal with it by adding a small amount of oil on a regular basis. Of course, you also have to keep cardboard or a small container underneath your car to keep from messing up your garage floor. But sooner or later, that seal has to be replaced....

 

The TSB is available already via the forum sticky for service bulletins.

(See the misspelled tramsmission...)

 

Thank you JagV8 that is the exact TSB I was talking about!
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You're welcome.

Have you got any others that aren't there?

 

It's hard to say? I have copied all I can find which were mainly from this and other Jaguar sites. But I have 58 TSB's and it's about 7 MB in size. I tried to focus on the STR related ones.
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Maybe they could go on the site where the others are. May be worth asking (Jim, I suppose).

 

I don't know who Jim is but I would be glad to send them to anyone who would like them?
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It's Jim the admin man, https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/members/jimc64-107/

maybe you could PM him and make a plan to post the TSBs.

 

Thanks norri, beat me to it!

 

Here is a shot I took while changing my oil looking towards the front of the car. I noticed this whole was opened. Is there supposed to be a dust shield or something here? The oil is dripping down into the bottom of the housing and then dripping out onto the ground.