Oil pan question

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71fastback

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Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Messages
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Location
Littleton, CO.
My Car
1971 Mustang Sportsroof.
Hi All!

Recently I cleaned the undercarriage and engine with some Engine Brite. After that, I developed an oil leak at the dipstick tube where it enters the engine. I fixed that easily enough by taking out the tube, removing the old, cracked O ring and running a small bead of high temp. RTV where the dipstick meets the engine.

After that was cured, I developed another oil leak at the front passenger side corner of the oil pan. I could understand this because when I did my cam swap a while back, I had to lower the front of the oil pan and my gasket kit had two cheesy cork gasket pieces to put on the corners of the oil pan. Well, I used those gasket pieces with some high temp. RTV and they held for a while

but now one is leaking.

Anyway, I bought a nice rubber Felpro oil pan gasket and some more RTV and got busy taking the bolts off the oil pan (which, by the way, is some chrome after market pan). The pan may be a bit deeper than the stock pan because, when I do an oil change, It takes more than 5 quarts to fill it to the full line on the dipstick and this is after running the engine to fill the new oil filter.

To make a long story short. I can't drop the oil pan down far enough to clear the crank and slide it out. I thought about taking the two horizontal bolts out of the motor mounts and then jacking up the front of the engine by putting a block of wood under the harmonic balancer.

Does this sound like a bad idea to anyone? I'm only talking about jacking it up a little bit. Just enough to get the pan out. If anyone else out there has had this problem and came up with a simpler solution, I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance,

Jason

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jason

that's the way to do it. I've done that process many times to pull the pan. be sure and disconnect your battery to not cause any other issues.

 
Watch your transmission dipstick. Remove it before jacking up the engine or you'll risk bending the finger piece on the support that runs from the firewall to the shock tower. You may have to turn the crank to get the clearance when you drop it.

 
We recently replaced the oil pan on my '71 Grande M-code and had to jack up the engine.

In the process we found a broken motor mount so we replaced both of those.

The Ford shop manual says to remove the cross member (4 bolts) but mine is welded to the

frame. Also make sure your dip stick and holder are proper for the engine. I ordered a new

chrome dipstick, for cosmetic reasons, and discovered the dip stick I had was wrong for the

engine.

mike

 
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