'99 Intrepid - Dealer Stripped Oil Pan Drain threads?

"Long life" in the case of the classic 855 Cummins might mean three or
four million miles or thirty thousand hours, and then finally being
scrapped because of obsolescence rather than structural failure. In
aircraft service an engine has a typical TBO of 2000 hours and a crank
or set of cases might go three major overhauls.

The 5.7 Olds was actually at the end of its design cycle a reliable
powerplant ....a fact few remember. Earlier ones had problems but
catastrophic crank or block failure happened, if at all, at well over
the 100,000 mile mark, when most gas counterparts had been replaced or
the car junked.

The bottom line is that VW and Peugeot determined that the per unit
weight and materials cost penalty was outweighed by cost savings in
commonality of parts. The weight penalty is simply not colossal and it
results in a gas engine that is more reliable and more rebuildable.

 

The LH car oil pans have no insert - 100% aluminum. I suspect there are
a lot of other aluminum-panned cars without inserts out there as well.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

I used to be the one that raised that question every time this
discussion came up (you were part of the last discussion on this). At
that point, someone was always quick to point out that the shavings
would always stay in the bottom of the pan and not be sucked up by the
pickup tube. I'm guessing they're probably right. Another person
pointed out that the filter would catch them. I pointed out that the
filter is downstream of the pump, and I wouldn't want anything,
including soft aluminum chips, going thru my oil pump with 0.001"
clearances.

However, when I did mine, after running the self-tapping O.S. plug in
without washer, I removed it, inserted the straw of a full can of brake
parts cleaner all the way into the hole (so the tip was past where any
chips would be), and flooded the bottom of the pan for several seconds
with a cup or two of cleaner, and let it run out rapidly. I then poured
a quart of oil into the regular filler, let it drain out, and then
repeated the parts cleaner flush. This was followed by visual
inspection to make sure there were no chips trapped in the threads of
the hole.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

I'm not convinced having seen some high speed photographs many years ago
of the inside of a crankcase of an operating engine. The oil is pretty
"active" in the oil pan.

That is probably about as good as you can do. Personally, I'd still be
inclined to remove the pan and replace it with a good used pan from a
salvage yard or have a machine shop insert a steel sleeve or weld shut
the existing hole and drill and tap a new one.


Matt

 

You run the very real risk with one from a salvage yard of the threads
having been weakened (on the verge of stripping), but the idea of
helicoiling one from a salvage yard is a good idea - which is what I
tried, but the helicoil was put in crooked so that the gasket would not
fit flush to the land area and so would not seal - fortunately I
realized that before going to the trouble of swapping the pans. At that
point, I decided to cut my losses and replaced the original stripped out
pan with a new pan (with the same potential for stripping, except I do
my own oil changes - the original one had been stripped when I bought it
at 58k miles - it had been a fleet vehicle).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')