While my explorer was never as bad as the one below I wanted to post these links with a short description of the problem. Basically, the RTV pan gaskets can break down over time leading to chunks of gasket material in the oil pan which get sucked into the oil pump screen clogging it and leading to problems with oil pressure. I've had variable pressure readings mostly on the low side for a while now. My pressure reads pretty good only when hot on the freeway. I'm going to use the Matt88 method and try to modify it to work even better.
Matt made a coat hanger the correct shape to scrap his oil filter screen by going through the oil drain plug hole and then rinsing his pan through the oil senser hole. All in all it's a great idea. I am thinking about finding some small copper or steel tubing to fabricate a mini vaccum or spray device that will unclog the screen directly. It's gotta be small diameter so I went to home depot and see they have 1/4" copper tubing for refrigerator water line. If I can't find anything smaller I'm going to buy some and try to bend it to the appropriate shape to reach the screen. I haven't figured out the rest of it yet but am toying with the idea of injecting WD-40 or other solvent directly onto the screen through the copper tubing or hooking up the copper tubing to some kind of suction system to see if I can make a mini gasket/vac to scrape and suck gasket material from the filter. Any suggestions would be appreciated. In the end this will be a lot faster than dropping the pan. Has anyone dropped the pan without removing the engine or transmission and gotten it back together correctly again? rc
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~singletn/exp.html
http://www.glue.umd.edu/~singletn/we.../oilflush.html
02-19-2002, 12:53 PM
