Upper Oil Pan Removal - Is there a Trick?
 

I've spent the past 2 weeks (largely due to procrastination :)) trying to get my upper oil pan out of the car. I'm not going to describe in detail all of the little problems I ran into along the way, but to make a long story short I can't physically get the pan out of the car. As it sits, the compressor and bracket are removed, the alternator and bracket are removed, the lower oil pan is removed, all the upper oil pan bolts are removed, the upper engine shock mounts are removed, the mounts are unbolted from the engine, linkage to the throttle is disconnected, the condenser and radiator are removed (part of the long story), the harmonic balancer is removed, the fan, etc., etc., etc.

With all of this off the engine, I raised the motor until the valve cover hit the firewall using a cherry picker. Visually, it looks like I should now have room to slide the upper oil pan out....but I tried and tried and tried for about 2 hours to no avail. I was even turning the crank to allow it to slip past the rear two pistons. It then hangs up on the crossmember and/or the crank mounts.

Is there a trick to this? The only other things that I can think of is to remove the valve cover for more clearance and/or remove the oil pump assembly and pull it out from the rear. Or...heaven forbid, I've got to pull the entire motor. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. Thanks in advance.

Oh yeah, I forgot. This is an 85 300TD

I have not done it but I have heard, I believe that you can. I would try to remove the valve cover for more clearance.

Good luck

Tom

Thanks Tom. I'm not entirely certain that removing the valve cover alone will give me enough clearance. I think that I'm pretty close to hitting the trans tunnel as it sits too. I might remove the valve cover just to find out that I pick up a 1/4" before I hit the trans tunnel.

Can anyone verify that removing the valve cover will allow this pan to come out?

I think you need to remove the driveshaft, then the tranny mount and shift linkage. after that, the entire unit(engine-tranny should just pull right up out of there.;)
seriously, I bet you would be time ahead to have done it that way- plus you could do all kinds of other stuff while your there.

why are you dropping the pan??

I had an oil leak near the front of the motor. I searched high and low to find it and then came to the conclusion that it was the front crankshaft seal. I set out to replace that, pulled the harmonic balancer, and then found tons and tons of caked on grease. I scrubbed and sprayed it all off with brake parts cleaner to then discover a massive wad of jb-weld directly behind where the harmonic balancer sits. It was the crankshaft seal leaking...but not around the crankshaft. It's been leaking where the seal meets the JB-Weld blob. Overall, this project has been a nightmare. The sad thing is that I've taken chances on sketchy Flea-bay cars several times before, with no problems. This one was local, I looked at it, it has service records nearly all the way back to day one, seemed like a sure bet. Wrong. I've got record of an indy shop replacing the front crankshaft seal at 130,000 miles. They must've just thrown in the JB repair for free because it never showed up on the receipt. How nice of them! :D

I have learned a ton of things here on the forum, and one of them is to
remove the upper pan, pull the engine. For the amount of work you have
gone through, you could have pulled the engine.

I pulled mine in July, took out eng. and trans together. while you have it
out good time to replace other items, like oil cooler lines, oil filter housing
gasket.

Charlie

That's not the answer I was looking for! :(

spin,

Did U loosen the engine mounts and jack or lift the engine up as high as possible?

P E H

Yes. It's lifted until the valve cover hits the firewall.

spin,

OK, I thought that might help.

P E H

I ran into a similar situation with my old BMW. Yes, you need to loosen the motor/tranny mounts and jack the engine up. It doesn't have to be completely removed, you can still leave the drive shaft intact, but it does have to be lifted up. I never heard about removing the valve cover (the additional clearance would be minimal) but it makes sense if you cant lift it all the way up. Try removing the throttle linkage at the firewall. I just loosened my oil pan after removing the bottom one and slid it out towards the rear of the vehicle, cleaned it up and installed a new gasket.

I just thought I'd add some closure to my thread...

I went after my upper oil pan for about 2 hours again this morning... to no avail. The FSM states that it is possible to remove the upper oil pan without pulling the motor, but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. :) I actually think that I could've used force (prybar and BFH) to get it out, but that wouldn't do me any good when I put the new one back in with a fresh bead of sealant on it. I was also getting nervous about damaging the crank bearings while prying and tugging on the oil pan. Eventually, I threw in the towel and just pulled the whole engine and tranny. If somebody else out there has successfully pulled this job off without pulling the motor, then enlighten the rest of us.

Otherwise, I declare that YES you do actually have to pull the motor to replace the upper oil pan.

Uh oh
 

Spinsession, Glad to find and read your post but I think I have the exact same oil leak as you, I really was hoping to find that there was a way without pulling the engine.

Any advice before I dive into this?

Thanks.

Will

1977 300D Sold
1979 240D Sold
1981 240D 152,000 miles

As I mentioned in the post above, I really do not believe that it's possible. Pulling the engine really isn't too hard. Having already removed nearly everything from the motor, I pulled the motor/trans together in about 30 minutes. I'd say just go for it. Now that it's out (yes, it's still out...did I mention that I'm a procrastinator :)), it's easy to work on everything. I'm going to replace every single gasket and seal on the thing before I put it back in. The reason I've stopped is because I'm debating whether to replace the rear main seal or not. I think it would be the smart thing to do, but I'm chicken. It's not leaking, but half of me says that I'd be foolish to have the entire motor out and not do it, while the other half of me says that I run a good chance of messing up the crank bearings, or the injector timing, or any number of other things if I try. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" or "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Which is it? That's my dilema. :confused:

To answer your question again though, just pull the motor! Once you've crossed that psychological line, the rest will be a piece of cake. Good luck!

You have a wad of JB weld , too? did your cars go to the same hack shop?

or is it just your front main seal? that is not too terrible difficult to do, but you do need to pay attention to the locating dowels, etc- there is tons of info on this.