Replacing oil pan gasket

So I'm in the process of tracking down oil leaking on my '99 Tacoma. I've been noticing drops of oil on the pavement where I park my truck and I started with the valve cover gasket. They were leaking so I replaced them but they weren't the main cause of it. Looking underneath I seen that the oil pan has a bunch of oil caked up on it and looks like it's leaking from the gasket. My question is what is the easiest way to drop the oil pan? My truck is a 4wd so the axle is in the way of just dropping it and shimmying it out of the way. I could remove the axle and differential or I can remove the motor mounts and lift the engine but both seen difficult. I'm wondering if they're is a simpler way that I'm not seeing at the moment.

 

Dropping the diff is the easiest way, but make sure you're not leaking from your front main and or rear main first before ripping the whole front drivetrain out.

I dropped my diff and resealed my upper and lower pans *twice* on my 2nd gen before I realized my mistake. The FIPG seal is pretty damn solid, the front and rear main will fail before the pan seal.

 

I drop diffs quickly now, so its always my go to solution. That said its a bitch at home.

If you have a crane, I'd almost say motor mounts is easier, but use a secondary method to prevent engine from dropping.

Also when you have the pan off, clean the pickup screen off.

 

Ok thank you both for your insight, and yeah the rear main seal was my next stop. I've been slowly fixing things on her since I bought it last April. It's in beautiful condition all things considered just needs a little TLC lol

 

Well worth it.

 

Done it and there is only two ways of dropping the pan:

1. remove front diff (not that hard, only three big bolts)
2. lift engine out

I went with first option because it's quicker to undo three bolts than setting up a crane and securing the engine in place when its out. Also, I didn't have access to a crane in the first place

 

Forsure that's probably the method I'll go with then hopefully that solves it and its not the rear seal

 

None of this is easy.

 

Clean up the engine as best you can to help confirm the leak is actually coming from the oil pan seal to the block and not from another source. It could possibly be coming from the oil cooler. It could be leaking down from a bad camshaft or crankshaft seal. It could be leaking from the rear main seal.

It could be you didn't do the valve cover gasket job right. When doing the valve cover gasket job, did you replace the rear cam plugs? Did you remove and reseal the half moons? Did you put FIPG in all the appropriate spots on the head before putting the valve covers in place?

Now, even if you find the culprit is the oil pan seal, is the leak bad enough for you to perform all the work necessary to get it fixed? Like others have stated, the front diff needs to come out. You can't get the pan out with the diff in unless you lift the engine out which would be even more work than just pulling the diff. Oil is affordable, and if the leak isn't that bad, ignore it. If you're the OCD type and will loose sleep over it, I guess fix the leak. Personally, an oil pan leak would have to be pretty bad for me to want to do all that work to address it.

If you decide to go for the pan removal, here's a video you could use to pull the front diff. In the video, we clearly struggle getting it out. Since making the video, we learned a much easier way to go about it. It involves disconnecting the driver side engine mount, jacking up the engine a couple inches and also unbolting the vacuum and breather hard lines on top of the diff. We document this technique in a pinned comment (1st comment you see). Good luck.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/w_gPiDvh9v4

 

Yep, you speak the truth. Easy compared to what? Now that I know the trick to getting the diff out without a fight, it's a lot easier than I show in the video, but I'd never classify this job as "Easy". It's quite a bit of work just to address an oil leak.

I've also pulled my share of engines, and it's a lot of work. Not easy in the least bit.

 

Clean it really well and monitor it. The valve cover leak will seep down over time and saturate the whole damn engine. You may not have anymore leaks, just residual stuff

 

Yeah definitely go for the low hanging fruit first. Oil cooler is easy, comes out through the wheel well. O-ring on the dipstick tube. When you do a timing belt be sure to change front crank seal and camshaft seals - this was major leak on mine. My truck is 98 and oil pan seems to be OK.

Even when I did all seals and valve covers I still had a leak - it was the oil filler cap gasket!