# Check Your oil pan bolts



## smorey78 (Apr 8, 2012)

so i am waiting for my tune to get here from BNR (awsome people) and i decided to change my oil. it was just about time anyway. so i put the car up on the lift and up she went. started to look around making sure all is good and oh no...what....what is that! i found a lil less than a half quart of oil on the splash shield and on the side of the engine. removed the cover as fast as i could and cleaned all the oil off of it. I looked up and all around and only saw oil around the second oil pan bolt from the right of the balancer(crank pulley). i notied that the bolt was backed out more than half way. i removed it all the way cleaned the whole area, sealed the bolt and put it back in and tighten it to 89"lbs. so i than checked all the rest. spec is 89"lbs. i found 5 more bolts loose at only 60"lbs. WOW go GM! check them out guys!


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

I have to change my MTX fluid soon, so I'll definitely be checking this at that time.


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## Hoon (Mar 18, 2012)

**** i don't have a TQ wrench that goes that low but i'll take a look next oil change. 

Interestingly, a friend of mine was putting longtubes on his 2012 Boss 302, and realized many of the fasteners were barely more than finger tight. The car has less than 5K miles. He pretty much removed the starter without tools and the motor mounts weren't far behind. 

Looks like Ford isn't following their torque specs very well either.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

Bump! 

This topic needs to stay at the top. Everyone who has the means to really needs to check their pan bolts. If this is in any way related to the recall GM released for the shield hack, it will be very useful information to have. I've already notified Tom about the first post in this thread and told him I'd keep him updated if anyone else finds this issue.


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## sciphi (Aug 26, 2011)

Checked the oil, it's full. Nothing on the shield, either.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

I wonder if any of the reported fires were related to this? There was one fire reported to the NHTSA that said the last oil change had been over 3,000 miles earlier, which means the oil change wasn't the source of the accelerant.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

obermd said:


> I wonder if any of the reported fires were related to this? There was one fire reported to the NHTSA that said the last oil change had been over 3,000 miles earlier, which means the oil change wasn't the source of the accelerant.


I believe it's more likely that half a quart of oil would drain through a loose oil pan bolt than that an oil change technician dumped that same amount down the side of your engine. I know oil change techs are bottom of the barrel, but 1/4-1/2 a quart of oil is a lot of oil to spill.


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## silverls (Nov 12, 2011)

XtremeRevolution said:


> I believe it's more likely that half a quart of oil would drain through a loose oil pan bolt than that an oil change technician dumped that same amount down the side of your engine. I know oil change techs are bottom of the barrel, but 1/4-1/2 a quart of oil is a lot of oil to spill.


Agreed.

I will be checking my bolts.

For those without a torque wrench that goes that low, it really isnt all that hard to do without a torque wrench. For less than 100lbs you can take it to where it stops moving without any hard pressure and then another 1/4 to 1/2 turn putting a good amount of pressure on it. This should put it pretty close to 89 on the high side. I cannot recommend that you do this seeing as it wont be a perfect spec. However i have never had a problem in the past doing it this way for bolts that are just under 100lbs on their spec. 


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