New Oil Pan gasket leaking?

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Rocket Man

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The oil pan is thick aluminum and not stamped steel like the trans pan so I doubt it was damaged unless it got cracked which would be hard to do. It’s a structural part of the engine/trans assembly so it’s strong.
 

donjetman

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Oil pan is cast aluminum and doesn't bend, it cracks. I had an 02 Surburban with a cracked pan at the corner where the oil filter is. Previous owner over torqued it?
 
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Dustin Jackson

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@donjetman My first attempted tightening the oil pan down I found that I had the timing cover hanging down and the oil pan wasn't sitting flush to the bottom of the motor, I found that when I was trying to tighten it down. I was able to correct the timing cover and get everything lined up and had no additional drama when tightening the oil pan but we will see. I am going to order a proper in pounds wrench and give it another go, and get a new drain plug to stop that leak.
 
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Dustin Jackson

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@Rocket Man Sorry I do not have an update yet. Tahoe still drives great, took it up to Mount Shasta over the weekend.

After spending a month over the Summer repairing a lifter failure in my driveway I am not looking forward to wrenching on it again so I am procrastinating a bit. Oil level looks great, I think after the AFM delete my oil consumption is much less than it was before even with this oil leak. I am about 3k into this oil change and oil looks full still.

My oil cap neck was coming loose before the afm repair and I think that was causing my motor to be sucking in dirt from the oil cap area and I put in the new valve cover design so after the rebuild the PCV system is in much better condition and probably sucking in less oil than before.
 

Rocket Man

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@Rocket Man Sorry I do not have an update yet. Tahoe still drives great, took it up to Mount Shasta over the weekend.

After spending a month over the Summer repairing a lifter failure in my driveway I am not looking forward to wrenching on it again so I am procrastinating a bit. Oil level looks great, I think after the AFM delete my oil consumption is much less than it was before even with this oil leak. I am about 3k into this oil change and oil looks full still.

My oil cap neck was coming loose before the afm repair and I think that was causing my motor to be sucking in dirt from the oil cap area and I put in the new valve cover design so after the rebuild the PCV system is in much better condition and probably sucking in less oil than before.
I get it. It only takes a few minutes to torque those bolts especially if you have a set of ramps, though. At least check to see if they’re loose.
 
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Dustin Jackson

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I get it. It only takes a few minutes to torque those bolts especially if you have a set of ramps, though. At least check to see if they’re loose.
@Rocket Man Do you think I should go over it with my foot pound torque wrench set to the lowest setting or should I get a proper inch pound torque wrench?
 

Rocket Man

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@Rocket Man Do you think I should go over it with my foot pound torque wrench set to the lowest setting or should I get a proper inch pound torque wrench?
Harbor Freight sells an inch pound one for cheap. I don’t know of any foot pound ones that are accurate at 8-9 ft lbs.
 

Rocket Man

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Sometimes with low foot pounds you can convert to inch pounds I have done that with motorcycle fasteners. https://www.theunitconverter.com/foot-pound-to-inch-pound-conversion/8-foot-pound-to-inch-pound.html
Yeah 12 inch lbs=1 ft lb so it’s not hard. The specs on my oil pan are 108 in lbs, pretty sure his are around there. But he only had a torque wrench that went down to about 12-15 and he used that, set on its lowest setting so like I stated in my earlier post, that’s 144-180 in lbs or are we missing something?
 
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