Slim

I think I blew the rear main seal on my eninge the other night. I was merging onto the freeway in 3rd gear (nothing over 6K rpms), shifted into fourth, then fifth. After a minute I started to smell burining oil and the clutch started slipping badly with lots of smoke billowing out the back. Made it home fine (oil light did not come on). At first though, and smell under the hood, was that the tranny blew. However, I checked the engine oil and there is NONE on the dipstick. Regardless, I'll have to drain both b/c I must drop the tranny to swap the clutch and check the seal.

Any one experience this (I tried searching the archives but the function isn't working for me right now-don't have access)? Will I need to remove the half shafts from the hubs and kingpin from strut to remove them from the transmission? FSM says to however I was hoping I could get around that. I've replaced the rear main seal in my M, wasn't that big of a deal, but it is a bit more straight forward than the Maxima's transaxle.

TIA,

Clayton