AllCammedUp

Ok gang, in the ongoing saga of putting on a Street RV head and RV cam from engnbldr.com, DOA racing timing guides, etc., etc., I have run into a problem.

After assembly of the front of the engine, I had to go back into the cover due to not being able to get the timing chain and cam sprocket over the cam. I failed to realize the tensioner was going to be an issue (this is the first time I've ever done this to my truck, so it's all news to me ) and in doing so, I igged up the head gasket and the oil pan gasket when I was trying to 'sandwich' the timing cover back in between the oil pan and the head.

SO... that leaves me with needing to make a return trip to the toyota dealer tomorrow to get a new head, oil pan and timing cover gaskets. In the mean time, I now have to pull the oil pan on my truck in order to fix this 'right'.

I was looking through my Haynes manual, and it has a very short (and vague) 2 paragraphs on pulling the oil pan that says something about dropping the crossmember and front differential. Trouble is, I'm not wanting to trust my first attempt at doing this to 2 paragraphs in an already vague book.

Does anyone have any 'how-to's', tips or know of a write-up on how to remove and replace the oil pan w/ the engine in the truck? I'm going to be doing this myself in my driveway, so any help or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Alimony

Not long after I bought my 88 4x4 pickup I changed the timing chain. I did it without dropping the oil pan, I just loosened all the bolts, took out a lot of the bolts in the front of the pan and let it ummmm dangle? down in the front. It worked well for me but I found that I wasnt the first person to have the timing chain cover off and the person that did it before me and buggered up the gasket pretty good and making it seal again was gonna be a problem.

What I did was with the timing chain cover off I tightened the oilpan back up and took a razor knife and cut the gasket off that would have been under my timing chain cover. I went to Auto Zone and got some gasket material and made a new piece for under the cover and used silicone for the seams.

I didnt have any leaks at all but it only had to stay that way for about a month when I spun a rod and had to pull the motor anyways.

Hope this was some help to you and good luck!!

Alimony

AllCammedUp

That sounds like it could work for me. Did you lower the *entire* pan and let it hang on the bolts while they were still threaded in a bit (like dangling from a rope)? If so, what did you do about the rest of the gasket? Did you just re-RTV the entire pan and bolt it back up again?

I really need to go ahead and get the pan off because I was getting some oil in the coolant, and I probably should clean the inside of the pan out and check the screen, just to make sure. I just didn't want to have to take the entire front differential down and get into some stuff I've not done before.

My oil pan gasket is leaking in a couple places, anyway, so it's probably best for me to drop the pan. Hmm... I wonder how I'd get the entire gasket re-placed that way???? I bet that I could, but I'd get all kinds of crap in the pan cleaning up the old gasket material and off the block.... I'd really need to get my die-grinder w/ a scotch-brite pad up there to clean it all off.

Dang... the more I think about this the worse it sounds.