Anyone replaced their oil pan gasket?

[jdc28va]

While changing brake pads / rotors / oil this weekend, I noticed what looks to be a very small leak in my oil pan gasket.

Has anyone replaced theirs yet? The gaskets are relatively cheap, but I'm not sure how detailed the labor is. It looks like it might require removing the sway bar linkages up front to rotate the sway bar out of the way, or maybe the whole sway bar needs removal. Other than that, looks like just a bunch of bolts to remove and then reinstall.

I'm considering replacing it during the next oil change, but wanted to see if there were any major challenges involved.

JDC

 

[edwx]

Are you sure it's the gasket? I had oil dripping off my pan and other places in that general area, and it turned out to be the differential pinion seal. I had to clean everything off a couple of times, and drive it, to really see what was leaking. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[jdc28va]

Are you sure it's the gasket? I had oil dripping off my pan and other places in that general area, and it turned out to be the differential pinion seal. I had to clean everything off a couple of times, and drive it, to really see what was leaking. Just my 2 cents worth.

Not positive yet. I cleaned it up really well, and plan to jack it up and take another look this weekend.

Did you replace the pinion seal yourself? How difficult was it? If you took it to the shop, what was the cost of replacement?

 

[edwx]

I thought it was my oil pan gasket too, at first. I tightened the oil pan bolts. Some were VERY loose. I knew it was the pinion seal, because I could see where oil was slinging onto the side of the pan. It took me a couple of good clean-up sessions (PITA) underneath to be sure.

A friend of mine helped me replace the pinion seal. He has a lift and air tools and big sockets, which made the job easy. It took us about an hour and a half. The main problem was getting good access to the pinion/seal area. We loosened whatever we had to to removed the cross member, then it was pretty easy. The crossmember bolts were a pain because they were in backwards, so to speak, that's why we had to loosen other stuff to gain access to the cross member bolts. The air tools made it really easy. We dropped the front drive shaft, marked the yoke/flange (it has to go back exact), removed the pinion nut, flange and seal. I thought we would need a puller to get the flange out, but it came out easily. Minimal prying did the trick. The seal came out easy, and the new one went in easy. Then we reassembled it. The leak stopped. The seal was about $10 from NAPA. If I had to do it again, I'd probably use a Motorcraft seal, it looked a little beefier than the NAPA seal, but the Motorcraft seal was the one that failed, so go figure. You might be able to do it without removing the cross-member. That was the hardest part. I'm guessing the dealer would charge about $200, but that's just a guess. Hope this helps.