Hi Guys.. I am a new owner of a mint 97 Blazer 4x4 and so far by reading the posts i was able to convert my fuel spider and replace the fuel pump... this site saved me big $$$ ... now i have one more annoying problem.. its a drip of oil from the pan... I used so blackleak dyeto confirm this so what i want to know before i replace the oil pan gasket is this... do i have to lift the engine to remove it... I cant find any topic discussing this topic... anything to prepare myself with.. i will replace the oil pump while im down there. thanks for all your help.

 

The first thing I would recommend is to make sure all of your pan bolts are tight. They don't require great amounts of torque to seal the pan up, but I found 9 of the pan bolts on my old Bravada were loose and loosened up again after I tightened them. I ended up having to remove them and clean the threads both in the block and on the bolts themselves, then use some medium strength loctite to keep them in.

The next thing is to check where the leak is coming from. Is it really the pan gasket or is it possibly the rear main seal? Do you have an aluminum oil pan? If you do, the book calls for the removal of the engine to change the gasket. This is due to the structural nature of the aluminum oil pan. If you do not have an aluminum pan, remove the torque converter dust sheild and have a look at the front of the flex plate. If it is all wet with oil, you have a rear main seal leak.

Hope this helps.

 

Is it a big job to replace the rear main seals?

 

depends on your definination of 'big job'. Engine or Tranny out is the way I've always done it. Maybe there is someone out there that loosened up the tranny, slid it back and snaked their way in there but....good luck. But as the previous posters said-check out the rear main. That is most likely the culprit. JP