Triumph Repair: oil pan gasket, pan gasket, soft aluminum

Question
Hi Howard,

I just bought a 1978 spitfire.  I noticed when changing oil for first time that there is a lot of crud on bottom of engine.  i haven't cleaned it yet but i guess the oil pan gasket is shot.  can i replace the seal without pulling the engine?  if so, is there anything i should know in advance?  thanks for any insight.

craig

Answer
Hi Craig,

First you need to clean the area you suspect is leaking oil then run the engine and keep close watch to see where the oil is coming from. If it is just caked with oil and dirt and not dripping oil on the ground, you should just try snugging the pan bolts up a little (not too tight) Clean the area and forget it.

If you have a white clean driveway and you don't want to have oil spots on it you either need to put a pan under the car or sell the car. I have worked on British motorcycles and British cars most of my life and I can tell you for sure that you will not stop a British car from dripping oil. (at least the British cars up to the 90s) There are hundreds of jokes and even bumper stickers about it.

Even expensive Jaguars leak oil up to the 90s. In early 70s at a dealership we complained to Jaguar that the customers were complaining about oil leaks and we tried repeatedly to stop the leaks and Jaguar told us to run the car and park it on a clean piece of concrete over night and if there were more than two spots the size of silver dollars, they would allow us to try to repair it. But if it only had two spots or less they would not under warranty allow us to make attempts to fix it.

Be very careful when trying to tighten the front pan bolts because they are threaded into a block of very soft aluminum and are easily stripped out. Also at those same front bolts, if in its' history someone put the wrong length bolts in there, they will have pushed the ends of the aluminum out and oil then can leak down the threads and if the bolts have been over tightened and the threads stripped out, the bolts can fall out and all of the engine oil will be lost as they drive. I had to rebuild two Spitfire engine for that reason.

As for pulling the pan without pulling the engine, we always pulled the engine for such work because if a pan is leaking most of the other seals are leaking too and we only did it if we were allowed to do the whole thing. The front bolts are the ones in question as to weather there is room to access them. I don't remember how much room you have but you can always just loosen the front motor mounts and raise the motor just a little to gain room if needed.

If it is not leaving a puddle of oil just clean the engine snug up the bolts and forget it.

Howard