Amy’s Garage

I was walking through my shop the other day and I noticed Kevin, one of my technicians looking at this really oily – oil pan.

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It’s really important that the oil pan is full of oil. The Engine oil lubricates, cools and cleans the internal combustion engine. The oil pan is constructed of steel. Oil pans very rarely leak, unless the vehicle is driven over something that cuts into the steel. It’s the gasket that is prone to leaking.

See the edges by my fingers are all oil soaked? That is where the gasket had worn and the main reason this particular oil pan was leaking.

This is a brand new oil pan with the new gasket just sitting o top of it. See the baffle (hole) in the bottom. This is so the pick-up-tube will always be submerged in oil even when the vehicle goes around a sharp turn or up or down a steep hill. Can’t be running out of oil… engines hate that!

That piece of pipe on the bottom left is the pick-up-tube. It sucks the oil into the oil pump and it flows through the engine block, falls down the sides of the crankcase in a never ending cycle… until you have an oil change and exchange the oil for fresh oil!

To get the gasket on so well as to guarantee no leaks, Kevin glues the gasket onto the oil pan before bolting the pan back to the vehicle. The gaskets kind of wiggle all over the place and its near impossible to get a snug fit without taking the extra time to secure the gasket.

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He bolts and clamps it for about 20 min. before mounting it back on the vehicle. It takes some extra time and effort to glue the gasket, but we have found on some vehicles it is the only way to get a seal that won’t leak.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 8:40 am and is filed under Automotive Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.