Change out truck pan with engine installed?

[norville]

Hey all,

I recently purchased an 86 Long bed already LS swapped. I'm currently cleaning up a lot of the roadkill decisions made on the installation along the way.

I'm considering lowering the truck but it has a truck pan under there which hangs about 2 1/2 inches below the cradle. The cradle is 12" off the ground. It urrently has 27" tires on it now, If I drop the front 2" and the rear 2" that's about all I can go in my area. Plus she already sits level.

The question comes down can I swap this oil Pan out with the engine installed or do I have to pull the motor to do it. The last 2 Swaps I did , I did the pan on the stand.

I'm thinking about going the other way and putting 30" tires and run it as a muscle truck if i have to pull the motor to change the pan. I can't go super low in Pa , the roads are trash.

Thanks,

[mongocanfly]

the way the sump and windage tray are, i think it would be extremely hard to get the pan off with the engine in the truck..my 2cents

[biketopia]

Un bolt the motor mounts, jack up the motor to get clearance and I'm sure with enough cuss words it can be done in a reasonable amount of time, without pulling the engine.

[norville]

Ok, long story short. I was able to drop the pan worhout raising the engine and slide it to the left, and pull out the broken dipstick tube.

However, there was another chunk of tube in the hole, so I had to drop the pan completely. After hours of fighting it. My advice going forward would be to jack up the engine by the oil pan. Pull the motor mount bolts and drop the mounts onto small pieces of 2x4 at the mounts. I was able to pull the whole stock truck pan out that way .

I have to drill out the piece left in the block, I will replace this stock truck pan with a knock off holly 302-2 pan since I'm this far in and I damaged the leaky oil pan seal anyway. .

It took me 3 hrs to figure out what could be done in 20 mins..

[mongocanfly]

cool...i still dont think i could raise the engine enough in my C30 to get the pan off
my tube broke off on the 5.3 i have in the IH.. the end fell into the pan though.. but that pan is easy to get off..no crossmember under it

[norville]

I was not so lucky, as to have the piece fall in the pan.

The tail part of the dipstick broke in 2 and I had to drill out the remain piece in the hole. I could not even punch it out from below.

[norville]

What a mess, good news is, I can swap to a low profile pan and not worry about the stock truck pan hanging down below the crossmember.

[biketopia]

Dang, that's a bummer! Glad to hear you figured it out though and good on you for updating with some tips and direction for the next guy!