93 Del Sol Automatic Can the oil pan gasket be replaced easily ?

Or a frame piece needs to be removed ?

 

just snug the nuts up a little [not too much] and leave it alone. try a
different brand of oil too - castrol did wonders for leaky seals and
gaskets on my 89. still haven't had to change what was a serious
dripping leak.

 

probably have to wrestle with the exhaust. might try a dose of those
leak sealer goops; they do wonders with a low pressure rubber gasket
leak.

 

application of goop requires pan removal. in which case, you may as
well replace the gasket properly. much better to re-snug the bolts and
see if it fixes the problem. 9 times out of 10, it does.

 

naw, just the mouse milk you pour into the oil. i had a leaky rear
main seal on a volvo a while back, wasn't up to digging my way down to
it; the parts guy (mom n pop store, not poop boys) looks it up in a
catalog, says yep it might be susceptible, sells me a bottle of the
stuff. don't remember which brand. did a pretty good job stopping the
leak.

doesn't work on the gasket inside the vtec solenoid, btw, i guess it's
probably not rubber. goes through a quart a week.

 

no way. that's stuff is not just clogging your leaks, it's clogging the
oil ways you want to remain open too. terrible advice.

 

all oil formulations have a dose of seal swellers to keep the rubber
gaskets tight. some sort of solvent, i assume. now they have those
oils for older cars, which have a bigger dose in them. i'm not sure
the oil travels through any rubber hoses or other apertures which are
small enough in diameter that they would swell enough to strangle the
flow, even with the big dose you get in the leak stopper products.
everything has its price, of course, making the rubber exosed to this
stuff bigger and softer can't help but make it wear faster and get
leaker, but if it's already worn and leaky, you're not losing much and
saving yourself some time before getting to it. my experience is that
a single dose of the stuff can sometimes reestablish a seal enough
that it will stay sealed even when you change the oil and don't add
any more.

it's not like they're dumping oatmeal or something into the oil to
clog the holes, like cooling system leak fixes do. not the "reputable"
products anyway.

 

quality oils do indeed have seal conditioners, but they're not the same
as seal swellers, the garbage you buy in a little bottle that offers
temporary respite before things fall apart for good. [conditioners are
mainly plasticizers that keep the material flexible enough to do its
job. there may be a little swelling, but it's small. swellers can
bloat seals almost unrecognizably. they offer sealing while the seal is
still in swell mode, but after that, it's completely gone.]

 

i saw this walrus once...

 

Do I need to remove the exhaust pipe the runs under the oil pan or can
the pan be "angled" out once all the bolts are out ?

 

got to remove the exhaust.

beware - this is a non-trivial exercise. the bolts on the exhaust
manifold are frequently hard to get off, and if they don't strip [which
is also likely] harder to get back on. seriously, unless there is a
real leak, and it doesn't disappear after a week or two with a decent
oil with seal conditioners like castrol, you're /much/ better off just
re-snugging the bolts onto the existing gasket. don't over-tighten
though because then you bend the pan metal and then it leaks worse.

also, look for leaks above that gasket as it may be running down from
another location.

 

OK I will invest in a air compressor. this week. Gasket looks gone
from what I can see.