alia176
SILVER Star
Oil pan arch seal project
I tackled re-sealing the famous arch seal this weekend. This project is a little involved but fairly straight forward. While I had the engine raised, I took the opportunity to replace the motor mounts. I'm an ameteur so I'm sure there're more efficient ways to do this! I'd say this to be job.
It went something like this:
- wash the underside of your vehicle thoroughly at a car was. You'll thank yourself later!
- park on top of 4x4 or 6x6 wood or a set of ramps. Just make sure that you can still reach everything w/o tiring yourself
- wear safety glasses to prevent oil & crud going into your eye
- drain engine oil
- remove the oil filter (facilitates access to motor mounts)
- remove hood and mark where the brackets went (only if you're using an overhead hoist to pull up on the engine)
- remove the radiator cooling fan from the water pump and push it aside
- raise the engine as much as possible. Keep a close eye on the radiator fan and radiator shroud coming into contact with each other. An overhead hoist stays out of your work area the best.
- remove the two nuts per motor mount.
- remove dip stick holder.
- Remove the two bolts that attach to the a/c compressor main bracket
- remove two connectors (one is oil low level, the other one is for a sensor pickup)
- remove the front sway bar completely. You can keep it in there but just ain't worth aggravation or head bonking!
- remove the lowest (smaller) oil pan. The longer you let the oil drain, the less mess for later!
- remove LOTS of bolts and four nuts from the higher oil pan. Make careful note of what bolts go where. I used a old shipping box to place the bolts as they came out of the engine. There are several lengths/sizes/grades of bolts.
- make sure to remove the four bolts that are INSIDE the large oil pan.
- work the FIPG loose by working the larger oil pan. This will take some elbow grease and maybe some heat from a propate/butane torch. Resist the urge to use a chiesel/screwdriver/pry bar to separate.
- work the large oil pan out while paying close attention to the oil pickup screen.
- Place the large oil pan such that the oil pickup screen isn't distrubed.
- clean off the old sealant on both surfaces. You can use a Dremmel tool with round wire brush disc thing to clean things out of the grooves.
- Apply new sealant or FIPG and wait for it to become less tacky. If it's too tacky, then you'll smear as you install the large oil pan.
- Reverse the above steps for installation
- Clean off old FIPG from the smaller oil pan. There're grooves in this oil pan that needs to be cleaned out well before the new FIPG is applied.
-Install the smaller oil pan
-Add oil, filter, tighten motor mounts, install fan, hood, etc.
Gotchas to avoid:
-Protect the oil pickup screen
-while cleaning old FIPG, be sure to pick up bits and pieces from the large oil pan as you're working. I used a shop vac.
-keep the dust level down while everything exposed. Don't sweep the shop floor!
-have assitance for hood removal. It's not heavy but can be unwieldy!
-I try not to use air tools to remove the bolts, don't want a broken bolt head here!
-have LOTS of clean rags. This is not the place to be reusing old, dusty rags.
-pay close attention to the torque values of the various bolts. Don't confuse IN-LBS with FT-LBS numbers in the FSM.
No.1 (upper) oil pan
12mm head bolts- 15lb-ft
14mm head bolts- 32lb-ft
Oil pan to transmission 53lb-ft
No.2 (lower)
78 in-lbs
Pics to follow. Let me know if anything seems unclear to you!
Ali
I tackled re-sealing the famous arch seal this weekend. This project is a little involved but fairly straight forward. While I had the engine raised, I took the opportunity to replace the motor mounts. I'm an ameteur so I'm sure there're more efficient ways to do this! I'd say this to be job.
It went something like this:
- wash the underside of your vehicle thoroughly at a car was. You'll thank yourself later!
- park on top of 4x4 or 6x6 wood or a set of ramps. Just make sure that you can still reach everything w/o tiring yourself
- wear safety glasses to prevent oil & crud going into your eye
- drain engine oil
- remove the oil filter (facilitates access to motor mounts)
- remove hood and mark where the brackets went (only if you're using an overhead hoist to pull up on the engine)
- remove the radiator cooling fan from the water pump and push it aside
- raise the engine as much as possible. Keep a close eye on the radiator fan and radiator shroud coming into contact with each other. An overhead hoist stays out of your work area the best.
- remove the two nuts per motor mount.
- remove dip stick holder.
- Remove the two bolts that attach to the a/c compressor main bracket
- remove two connectors (one is oil low level, the other one is for a sensor pickup)
- remove the front sway bar completely. You can keep it in there but just ain't worth aggravation or head bonking!
- remove the lowest (smaller) oil pan. The longer you let the oil drain, the less mess for later!
- remove LOTS of bolts and four nuts from the higher oil pan. Make careful note of what bolts go where. I used a old shipping box to place the bolts as they came out of the engine. There are several lengths/sizes/grades of bolts.
- make sure to remove the four bolts that are INSIDE the large oil pan.
- work the FIPG loose by working the larger oil pan. This will take some elbow grease and maybe some heat from a propate/butane torch. Resist the urge to use a chiesel/screwdriver/pry bar to separate.
- work the large oil pan out while paying close attention to the oil pickup screen.
- Place the large oil pan such that the oil pickup screen isn't distrubed.
- clean off the old sealant on both surfaces. You can use a Dremmel tool with round wire brush disc thing to clean things out of the grooves.
- Apply new sealant or FIPG and wait for it to become less tacky. If it's too tacky, then you'll smear as you install the large oil pan.
- Reverse the above steps for installation
- Clean off old FIPG from the smaller oil pan. There're grooves in this oil pan that needs to be cleaned out well before the new FIPG is applied.
-Install the smaller oil pan
-Add oil, filter, tighten motor mounts, install fan, hood, etc.
Gotchas to avoid:
-Protect the oil pickup screen
-while cleaning old FIPG, be sure to pick up bits and pieces from the large oil pan as you're working. I used a shop vac.
-keep the dust level down while everything exposed. Don't sweep the shop floor!
-have assitance for hood removal. It's not heavy but can be unwieldy!
-I try not to use air tools to remove the bolts, don't want a broken bolt head here!
-have LOTS of clean rags. This is not the place to be reusing old, dusty rags.
-pay close attention to the torque values of the various bolts. Don't confuse IN-LBS with FT-LBS numbers in the FSM.
No.1 (upper) oil pan
12mm head bolts- 15lb-ft
14mm head bolts- 32lb-ft
Oil pan to transmission 53lb-ft
No.2 (lower)
78 in-lbs
Pics to follow. Let me know if anything seems unclear to you!
Ali
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