Oil pan arch seal (5 Viewers)

[Tbkw01]

This may seem like a silly question but to do this job does the shaft need to be pulled or is there enough wiggle room to leave it hooked up?

 

[Tbkw01]

This may seem like a silly question but to do this job does the shaft need to be pulled or is there enough wiggle room to leave it hooked up?

Does this job....

 

[alia176]

If you're referring to the front driveshaft, I can't recall if I pulled it but it wouldn't hurt to do so. Make as much room as possible for yourself!

 

[Atwalz]

Thanks for all collective information. It came in handy as I am resealing entire motor. 329k miles on clock and doing head gasket and new exhaust valves.

 

[Supra88]

Is there an objective way to determine if the leak is coming from the rear main seal or the rear pan arch? I have oil accumulating under the torque converter inspection hole, yet it's dry inside the bell housing from what I can tell. Either way, if I have to pull the tranny later, I won't have to pull the oil pan from what I'm reading on the FSM. Correct?

 

[Atwalz]

If you are that deep into it might as well reseal the upper oil pan. Most likely it is leaking at the rear pan arch not the rear main seal. That just my thoughts. When I resealed my pan, I didn't change the rear main seal. I just resealed both pans. Since the repair, no oil has appeared near bell housing and I have driven about 1000 miles.

 

[Beej]

Thinking about tackling this job soon as I have leaking at the inspection port.

If I have a 2.5 inch lift, is it necessary to put the truck up on ramps? If its on ramps, using a 2x4 and a floor jack on the h. balancer to jack up the motor is going to be more difficult. Is the extra clearance for convenience and comfort or will the oil pans not come out without more clearance?

 

[Rookie2]

I don’t think putting it on ramps is going to do anything for you and I’m not sure the lift helps you either. What you are trying to do is lift the frame up so you can then let the front axle down. Then lifting the motor gets you that last inch or so needed to get the pan out past the cross bar.

 

[Beej]

I don’t think putting it on ramps is going to do anything for you and I’m not sure the lift helps you either. What you are trying to do is lift the frame up so you can then let the front axle down. Then lifting the motor gets you that last inch or so needed to get the pan out past the cross bar.

Seems like OP just lifted the motor but he also mentions putting it on ramps to make room for the human underneath the truck. I'm wondering how much human room is needed. Might be a game day determination, I suppose.

 

[alia176]

Seems like OP just lifted the motor but he also mentions putting it on ramps to make room for the human underneath the truck. I'm wondering how much human room is needed. Might be a game day determination, I suppose.

I mentioned on my first post, to get as much space as you can gain under your vehicle BUT try not to overextend your arms and shoulders, as this just leads to muscle fatigue. But yes, the more room you have under the engine, the better. The more space you can muster between the front axle housing and the oil pan, the better.

At that time, I think I was 315s and 850J springs up front, so around 3" -ish of lift. FYI.

copy/paste from first post:

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.

 

[Rookie2]

Seems like OP just lifted the motor but he also mentions putting it on ramps to make room for the human underneath the truck. I'm wondering how much human room is needed. Might be a game day determination, I suppose.

.

The way I had mine configured (after various attempts and some head scratching) was place the jack stands under the frame rails back behind the front wheels, then lower the front axle down onto another set of jack stands (3 ton) on their lowest setting. That (combined with lifting the motor) provided enough height differential between the frame et al and the axle, to allow the pan to come out. Be careful if you go this route. Puts a lot of load on that back set of jack stands.

I didn’t quite follow the OP’s entire configuration. I did mine 14 years ago (and didn’t solve the problem. Mine turned out to be rear main) so these other guys may have found some other ways to do it I didn’t think of. PITA job either way, but I blew the better part of a half a day figuring out how to get that dang thing configured to get the pan out.

 

[96LXtech]

oil pan

I removed the the sway bar and then two engine mount bolts from underneath. Then jacked up the engine with 2x4 vertical on flywheel about 1-2". Came out!

I'm going with a job so far. Clean up time! Ordered some o-rings from CruiserDan.

Did you remove the fan?

 

[96LXtech]

Riad,

PM me if you have any issues/problems with this project. Plan on a long day! You'll need an inch-lb torque wrench for the smaller 8mm bolts. My old FIPG didn't want to release so I used a ratcheting strap to put constant tension on the oil pan while I worked it loose.

Good luck.

Ali

Set up where?

 

[Kamster]

Just finished this up and thought I would possibly add to the body of knowledge on this. This is just my 2 cents and your milage may vary.

First off Ali, big thanks for writing this up. I found it VERY helpful.

I would give this a full,

on a 4-banana scale. I say this just because,
1) you are going very deep into the bowels of the beast
2) you are doing a lot of this on your back with oil dripping in your face
3) there is a lot to do in short order
4) there is a lot that can go wrong

There is also an o-ring that seals Pan #1 to the oil pump housing I think. The FSM does not show a part number. I just put some FIPG around the oring, and so far so good. Might want to order this as it is probably just a few bucks.

I struggled keeping the rear arch clean and dry before putting pan #1 up. It is the low point and just seems to weep. Again, so far so good.

It was a pain in the , to get my engine to drop back on the motor mount bolt on the driver's side. Get a buddy to help.

Keeping everything clean is a challange without a parts cleaner. If you can have a shop steam clean the pans, that would also be great.

Put some cardboard or plastic down. Even with something down, and the oil drained, you are going to make a mess on the ground.

I dropped my front drive shaft, but you do not have to.

There is a bracket for the exhaust and one for the tranny cooler lines that will need to be disconnected too.

While you are at it, you may want to replace your front u-joints and the sway bar bushings. Now would be the time.

One tube of Toyota FIPG is more than enough for both pans.

I hate where Toyota put the oil filter on this truck (rant off).

A cherry picker works fine to lift the engine up enough to full pan #1.

Remember that 1 ft-lb is equal to 12-in-lb's. So the 80 in-lbs you need for oil pan #2 is about 7 ft-lbs.

A heated garage is awesome!

to the group

 

[alia176]

Good job dude! It is a PITA project, to say the least.

 

[Heckraiser]

Dumb question?

Would it be easier to saw off that brace that goes between the frame rails and then weld it back in? Or fabricate some sort of removable thingymajigger? Post #70 has me intrigued

:edit: more info:

Removeable Front Panhard Frame Brace

Anyone that has had to deal with the #2 (upper) oil pan knows this BAR (just ask Ali). This took me a bit longer since I was trying to be thorough and think this through but it should take no more than a couple of hours to replicate this. It also could be called a "cheap" mod since...

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[alia176]

I don't see why not as it's been done. It'd delete a fair amount of headache and wouldn't be very difficult to create a sleeve, similar to a rollbar dealio that you see on fandangle trophy trucks and such. The forces on that bar is axial and not radial which is easy to handle, i think.

 

[Kamster]

I don't see why not as it's been done. It'd delete a fair amount of headache and wouldn't be very difficult to create a sleeve, similar to a rollbar dealio that you see on fandangle trophy trucks and such. The forces on that bar is axial and not radial which is easy to handle, i think.

I agree. When I do this again, and I will have to this summer as it is still leaking, I will cut that sucker.

 

[GSTMike]

Great info, this is on my to-do list as I have some build up going on and I nearly certain it's not the rear main seal

 

[alia176]

I feel that this project should be done at the same time as the head gasket project. Why? To me, it's easier to pull the engine out to do the HG project and chances are, your engine is needing attention in other places, the arch pan seal being one of them. There is a debate between not pulling or pulling the engine for a simple HG project but having done two 80 HG projects both ways, I always promote the pulling of the engine. Once it's on the stand, you can do everything with ease and a LOT less back pain! YMMV.