Oil pan

[freebyrd24]

So I need to drill and tap the oil pan for the oil return. I was reading in my truck book and it said I need to remove the engine to take off the oil pan! please tell me this isn't true, or that I can do some sort of trick to avoid pulling the engine out???

[roadkill]

deff. going to b a pain trying to tap the oil pan while its still on the motor plus if u dont take the pan off theirs no way to clear the metal chips that you are going to make when u drill into the pan. and if i remember right their is a crossmember that prob going to be a pain to work around as well?

so im going wit:badidea: on trying to tap the oil pan with out taking it off.

[Jesshwarren]

The best thing for you to do is try running the return line into the oil drain plug hole. 1st off the oil pan does not have enough mass to tap it is pretty thin.

The oil drain plug hole should work ok. I have seen OEM setups on earlier turbo motors go into the bottom of the pan. VW had a setup like this. I seen it on some diesels also.

[freebyrd24]

Oh theres NO WAY i would tap with it still in the vehicle. I was just reading that in order to take off the pan, the motor needs to come out.

How would I go about making the oil return through the drain plug work? Do you happen to have a picture of what that VW setup looks like? And that would gravity feed into the special drain plug with no problems? Thank you everyone!

[freebyrd24]

Could I just drill and tap the bolt itself and put a fitting on that?

[Jesshwarren]

I don't have any pictures. I would find a T fitting with the same threads as the drain plug.

[freebyrd24]

I found a couple pictures last night, but don't have them on me now, I'm at work. I saw a couple people just use 90 degree AN fittings. Could I go that route? If I Tee'd into it, theres no where I need the other outlet in the Tee to go to right?

[D94R]

You can pull the pan with the engine still in there. But, you have to unbolt the engine mounts and yank the engine up about 5 inches to be able monkey twist the pan around to clear the cross member. (I know, I did it once.... ONCE)

At that point, you might as well just save you the time and stress by disconnecting the engine entirely and pulling it out.

[Jesshwarren]

I found a couple pictures last night, but don't have them on me now, I'm at work. I saw a couple people just use 90 degree AN fittings. Could I go that route? If I Tee'd into it, theres no where I need the other outlet in the Tee to go to right?

Yea that should work great. The T would only be so you could still drain the oil fairly easy.

[freebyrd24]

Ahh ok i see, to avoid taking off the tee everytime. So i could just block off that side of the Tee

[flyin]

My trick to get the pan out would be to cut the rivets on the frame for the I-beam mount and the ibeam assembly will be out of the way far enough to get the pan out. replace the rivets with grade 8 bolts.