Moroso 20558 7 quart oil pan.

One of my buddies got stuck with babysitting two of his grandsons. They are 8 & 5 years old. I cherrish teaching fabrication and hot rodding to younger folks and both these boys LOVE out old vehicles and seem to really be interested in what we're doing. But...being a working shop (always 3 or 4 projects going on), there are many potential dangers for young kids. 

When I was getting everything assembled to jack the car up; one of the young men had gotten into something and distracted me. I corrected the action and returned to complete my task. I *thought* I had the jack placed under the cross member; but I had it too far to the front. As I jacked the car up, it slipped and I heard a crunch. Looked under the car and the oil pan was on the jack. My heart stopped.

I pulled the jack and discovered that the oil pan was severly dented. Enough that I was pretty sure that this would have to be checked before I spun the engine over again. I was correct.

I previously had a Moroso 20557 6 quart pan. I figured that if I had to do this; I was at least going to make things better. You can never have too much oil capacity in a Cleveland. I ordered the Moroso 20558 7 quart pan. It's advertised as 7 quarts plus filter. It is actually more shallow that a stock pan or the 6 quart unit, so it has it's own specific pick up.

So...I unhook the exhaust from the headers, remove motor mount bolts, remove the fan shroud, remove the carburator and install the lift plate. Remove the hood and hook up the overhead chain fall. I get under the car and start removing oil pan bolts. The engine needs to go higher. I remove the wiper motor and vacuum can from the firewall. Lift engine another 2-3" and start pulling the pan out...gotta remove the sway bar. Get the sway bar removed and out comes the old pan.

As suspected, the pick up took some damage as well. The angle doesn't show it, but the tube was bent as well as tweaked about 12 degrees. It definately would have sucked some air after getting oil circulating, IMO.

I pulled the oil pump to install the new pick up. They auto parts store gave me the wrong oil pump gasket. I looked around and all of the parts stores showed the same gasket. Luckily, I keep gasket paper & I have a set of punches to make my own. When I went to install the new pan, it was hitting the cross member on the kick out. I also was not able to use my oil pan snap ups. I did something I HATE doing....I had to glue the gasket to the pan. I've always put high temp silicone in the corners where the gaskets meet, but I'm a big believer in letting gaskets do their job. I had to get the pan "close" and hold it while I had a buddy lower the engine down so it shifted forward. Finally got it in place and bolted it up. Put everything back together, fired it up and let it idle 15 minutes, shut it down and checked for leaks.

This oil pan fits our chassis. It's tight, but it's there. The sump sits above the cross member, and it *can* be installed without pulling the engine...just be patient.

After all of this: next week end I will look for my tranny leak.

I'm thinking the trans leak may be where I didn't get the bolts sealed. TKO's use anaerobic sealer instead of gaskets. I've read where the bolts that hold the case together have to have sealer applied. I don't remember doing that, but it's been almost 2 years ago.

Most leaks can be fixed, if you can get at the offending parts. I have sealed the back of an intake, blown out gasket, an oil pan leaking a lot, blown out gasket again. I also did a couple of valve covers with cork that I left in place and smeared the RTV over the whole seam.

If you can narrow it to bolts, and the fluid isn't under big pressure, clean it all well, and put Ultra Black or Copper etc, around the upper shank of the bolt. That should stop leaking around a bolt head, I've seen that done.