By
Cain, May 16, 2014
While changing my transmission fluid the other day I noticed my oil pan has a slight leak at the seal. I just did an oil change and it looks like it can wait until my next one as it's very very small. I plan on doing this myself as it looks pretty simple but just wanted to know if anyone has done this before and what parts I need for the seal. I looks like it's just a silicone seal but I'd hate to drop the pan and learn I don't have the correct parts to put it back on. Thanks.
Oil leak on the transmission oil pan or the engine oil pan? If the former - dom's got the links for you. If it is the latter - you are correct, oil pan uses a FIPG (form in place gasket) sealant. Not hard to do - but can be pretty time consuming and messy, if you haven't done this before or waited the right amount of time to let the sealant sit before assembly. There should be a gasket bead illustation online - as you need to apply the bead in a particular way.
Hard part might be trying to pull the oil pan off to reseal - that stuff can make it exceptionally time consuming to pull off the pan. Fortunately, there are pry points at several points around the pan - just have to work arond the pan and loosen it a little at a time. Or you could get lucky and it could just pop right off, depending on the extent of the leak.
If it is the engine oil pan that is leaking, you can install it with just a gasket after cleaning off the original sealant.
http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/x,carcode,1432846,parttype,5436
Thanks for the info. It is indeed the engine oil pan, but there's a leak in another place as well. I had some of the o-rings replaced a little while ago so it might be leaking there again or possibly something worse. Wherever it is, it's not an emergency because it's really slow, which is good because I just did an oil change not long ago. I recently switched to synthetic oil so it's possible that some problems with the seals are now being exposed. dom, of those three gaskets, is there one you'd recommend over the others or would I be best to go with the FIPG? I'd hate to pull it all apart only to have issues once it's put back together.
Any of those gaskets would work, but I would choose Fel-Pro gasket instead of FIPG.
I would start by locating the actual oil leak. Is it only at the timing chain tensioner's O-ring?
I believe the last time that's where it was and I got it fixed. My mechanic gave me the dye to stick in oil before I bring it in the next time. I only noticed the leak because there was some oil about to drip down from the oil filter that I saw when I went to change the transmission fluid. I followed the oil and it's not the filter, but higher than that, it just happened to run down that way. It was kind of hard to see up there and looking from the top didn't help much either. I looked on the other side by the drain bolt on the oil pan and noticed it was wet along the seal (pan seal, not the drain bolt itself) and higher than that. It might be that it's not the seal leaking and it's just the oil from above but there's a lot of sludge along the seal which leads me to believe the pan is leaking as well. I've driven about 1000km since the oil change and the oil level looks like it hasn't dropped much, if at all so it's pretty slow. Also I wiped up the areas I could reach and they look ok too. It'll probably be a few weeks before I can get it back to my mechanic with the dye in the system as I'm getting the AC fixed in my other car tomorrow. I do the regular maintenance and fix the easy stuff, but I have someone else do the hard work as I'm just learning about this stuff.
