Engine Assembly: Oil Pan

Time to close up the bottom end. To make sure the oil pan would not leak, I cleaned the surfaces and used Hylomar to glue the cork gaskets in place.

Then I placed the gaskets on the block and lightly screwed the bolts in to make sure everything was positioned correctly.

Then came a long pause in the oil pan installation. I noticed that the drain plug threads were pretty much gone and probably would not hold oil. I searched around for a new pan but only some chromed parts were available quickly. I wanted to retain the original look so I decided to fix the threads. I took the pan to a friend who welded a nut inside it. With that I could screw in a different bolt to use as a plug.

Finally I pushed the rubber end seals in the block, spread some more Hylomar on the gasgets and I was ready to install the pan.

After dropping the pan on the block, I torqued the bolts in many steps. First until they just pulled the pan in and then half a turn at a time so the flange would not bend. After a few rounds the pan was installed.

Project Blows Up

I've been preparing the car for the new transmission for the past days. I cleaned the underbody by scraping and brushing as much dirt out as possible. It seemed that some rust proofing had been added there at some point and it had worked really well. All floors seemed to be original and in really good condition from underneath. I just hope that the floors would have been rustproofed better from the inside too.

I sprayed some new rustproofing to the floors and turned my attention to the engine. Clearly some oil had been leaking from the rear seal or through the flywheel bolt holes.

I decided to drop the oil pan and replace the rear main seal and also investigate the bearings now that it was easy. I had to remove the crossmember under the engine and loosen the sway bar to get the pan out. It was a tight fit but I didn't have to remove the steering linkage. Everything looked pretty original inside the engine too.

Pretty much everything was covered in brown old oil. I have a feeling the engine has never been rebuilt. It was time to remove the end cap and replace the seal under it. It seemed to be the really old rope seal so I would have to loosen all the main bearing caps to drop the crank a bit to get the top half out. Unfortunately I did not get that far when I checked the bearing.

Yeah, it does not look too good. So now I will need to replace the main bearings. And while at it, rebuild the whole engine most likely. This project has officially now blown up...