Replacing Oil Pan Seals

[Greg Gieger]

I own a 94 SHO with ATX. Recently I noticed a small drip of oil in my drive way. I had the car in the dealership to have the ATX serviced and they told me the oil leak was coming from the oil pan and that to fix the problem they would have to drop the oil pan which is a 4 hour job. They quoted me $429 to drop the oil pan and reseal it with heat resistant silicon since the oil pan seals are no longer available. I checked around and found the front and rear oil pan seals were available at Cincy SHO and with shipping they cost me $27. The Ford dealership quoted me 4 hours at $65 an hour. That comes to $260 so I am wondering where they are coming up with the other $169 since two large tubes of the silicone cost only $16. Anyway, I now have the front and rear oil pan seals and think I am going to just replace the seals myself. From my Chilton Manuel it tells me to remove the starter, the fly wheel cover plate and disconnect the exhaust at the Manifold connections and then I can drop the oil pan. I had to replace the starter two weeks ago so I know I can do that. Has anyone done this before and is it that hard to do?

 

[SolidState]

if you changed the starter, you are half way there

Do yourself and your SHO a favour by replacing the rod bearing while you are at it. I had a fairly knowledgable memberof this community help me do the rod bearings on my 155k ATX and it really wasn't that hard.

Dropping the pan is relatively easy to do. If forced to do it again, I beleive I could do it in far less than 4 hours....maybe closer to 2...

and the oil pan gaskets are available at your local UAP/NAPA as a Fel-Pro set...I don't have the part number handy at the moment, but a simple search of the forum will net you the right numbers...

<small>[ January 06, 2004, 11:59 PM: Message edited by: SolidState ]</small>

 

[KM92SHO]

I am doing the same thing in my car i am replaceing the transmission and i also had a small leake from my oil pan. I went and got the gasket from Autozone pretty cheap i paid like $9.00 for it. its not hard to get it does not need to be special ordered or anything. I am nbot replaceing the bearing but how much is it to do something like that like how much is the bearing. Good luck to you hope its easy.

 

[silversho89]

Don't use silicone sealer. If that drips down in your pan to your oil pump, say bye bye to oil pressure and your motor. That's what I was taught. Sounds like that dealer is kind've lazy if they can't even find the seals and it takes them 4 hours to basically (I know there are other steps involved) drop the oil pan, put the seals in and bolt the pan back up.

 

[NotSoSlowSHO]

silversho89:
Don't use silicone sealer. If that drips down in your pan to your oil pump, say bye bye to oil pressure and your motor. That's what I was taught. Sounds like that dealer is kind've lazy if they can't even find the seals and it takes them 4 hours to basically (I know there are other steps involved) drop the oil pan, put the seals in and bolt the pan back up.

I dont know if you are refering to RTV when you say "silicone sealer", but you are required to use RTV when installing the pan.

The seals only seal the ends of the pan. The entire lengths in between are designed for RTV. Skip the RTV and you will have a LOT of leakage eek!

 

[91taurisho]

I ended up getting my oil pan seals from Josh at Sho-nut(Thanks Josh! ), but after I recieved them I planned on waiting to do them until I am ready to do my rod bearings too. I only have a small leak, maybe a quart every oil change. That's a lot better than it was before I changed my front main during my lower 60K. At that point it was more like 1-2 quarts every 1500 miles. That's also why I origanally bought the oil pan seals too! It was leaking so bad from the front main that it seemed like it was coming from the oil pan... shrug
Good luck!