Oil Pan O Rings - 98 S70 Turbo : The Write Up

[--Aaron--]

Welcome to the thread, here I will share with you my oil pan o ring job experience and shine some light on techniques and much more!

Before we start, in attempt to ease your mindset related to this job sit back and think to yourself, "I am doing all this work to expose 3 damn o rings." Get a chuckle in? Good, moving on...........

A Few Thoughts...........

Prior to this job I was very intimidated. The write up that exists already is on a 93 N/A and was pictureless so that didn't help much. Although there is some good information there. I really wasn't finding anything tutorial by searching VS. Needless to say though the job needed done and I was determined. It is a difficult job, don't get me wrong but surely far from impossible as long as you can change your own oil.

Symtoms and Overall Goal............

Mainly the symptom of worn out oil sump o rings is lack of oil pressure, which leads to initial start ticking up top. Mine had just started about a week prior to this job and it was noticeable during the first 5 or 10 minutes after starting the car cold or at operating temperature.

The goal is obviously to restore lost oil pressure thus properly lubricating the top internals upon starting initially.

Tools You'll Need..............

This is an exact list of what I used to complete this job:

- 3/8 drive metric socket set, 10mm to 18mm & ratchet

- 3/8 extensions, 2 long and one short

- metric wrench set, 10mm to 18mm

- channel locks

- pick set (for old gasket removal purposes)

- flathead screw drivers, small to long

- allen wrench (for turbo oil drain, 5mm IIRC)

- L shaped Torx set (handy for PS line retainers, oil thermostat & oil thermostat line connection)

- small block of wood (for use with floor jack to support the motor by Passenger axle bracket)

- General Purpose Automotive Grease, mine was Valvoline (for keeping o rings in place)

- Job Light (Snap On FTW)

For old seal removal I used the following with great success:

- green dish scrubbing pads cut into little squares

- Gum Cutter (carb cleaner)

For applying Volvo sealant:

- little foam roller (pretty much a miniature paint roller)

I have read that this can be applied several ways but my method applied it perfectly even and was very effective. Not to mention they're like a dollar, don't be cheap.

The Gum Cutter will tackle the grime down below on anything you may want to clean without hesitation, good stuff. I chose to do some cleaning with it and hope you do as well, it's not every day that you have your oil pan out afterall.

Parts You'll Need..................

3517857 - Oil Filter

977751 - Crush Washer

1161059 - Chemical Gasket

30750783- O Ring Kit

The O Ring kit does NOT include a turbo oil drain line O Ring so purchase that as well.

30637866

You will be removing the Oil Thermostat and will additionally need:

1366791 - Sealing Ring (rectangular)

This is optional but I suggest you change the cooler line O Rings at the thermostat as well:

968757 x2 - O Ring

All together we have about $65 in parts. Not too shabby.

Procedure..................

First thing you'll obviously want to do is raise the car and support it with jackstands right behind the rear subframe bushings. Proceed to drain your oil and remove your oil filter. I opted to install the drain plug and crush washer prior to beginning to avoid drinking oil when manipulating the pan out.

Before you raise and support the car be sure to remove the Passenger side wheel as you'll need access to the trap door behind it.

Alrighty, now onto prepping to remove the pan:

- Remove 3 PS line retainers and the squareish bracket next to the trans. torque mount. (T25 & 14mm IIRC, it was either 12 or 14 for the bracket)

- While you're in the area remove the trans. torque mount as well. (14mm & 18mm)

- From below get your extensions handy and remove the oil dipstick and tube. Put your fresh O Ring on the bottom of it before you lay it down. (12mm)

- Wiggle back and remove the turbo oil drain line. I laid mine out with the fresh seals next to the pipe to keep organized. (5mm allen)

- Go to the trap door in the passenger side wheel well and remove the oil thermostat. (T40 x 2) A long T40 is best used here, I came close to stripping the front torx with torx sockets.

- Remove the oil cooler line retainer bolt on the front facing surface of the oil pan. It's a bit of a tight squeeze but you'll get it. (10mm)

- There's a round metal thing coming off the subframe, take your channel locks and bend that down and under the subframe.

I suggest you completely remove the lower side engine mount, to do that:

- Take your floor jack and place your wood on it's platform, I kept the block of wood standing upright. Get it snug against your passenger side axle bracket.

Go back into the trap door area and:

- Remove the outward facing 14mm bolts which secure the block to the mount. It is easiest to use ~ 2 ft. of extensions so you can ratchet them out from outside of the wheel well.

- Remove tension as needed with your jack to remove them from the mount.

- Remove the 17mm bolts to the subrame, I found it easiest to do this with a regular ol' wrench. Watch your knuckles.

We are all prepped to remove the pan at this point, onto more fun stuff:

For starters I highly suggest making a cardboard diagram of what came out of what so you make damn sure all the oil pan bolts get back where they should be. It's almost idiot proof but just to be safe please take my advice. I chose to remove one complete side of oil pan bolts at a time and placing them on my diagram. Be sure to leave one bolt in on the furthest front and back surfaces of the pan to support it after you break the seal.

- Remove more bolts than I care to mention. (10mm, extensions, 12 or 14mm on trans. side)

- Get a smaller flathead screwdriver and GENTLY from the rear of pan wedge it between, the pan should fall easily as far as the 4 remaining bolts will allow it to.

You are now ready to remove the pan, a few thoughts:

The oil thermostat likes to wedge itself between the pan and subframe which will piss you off and prevent the pan from coming out, right before I tweeked the PS lines enough to remove the pan I gave it one final push out of the way and held the pan dead steady so that it did not slip back into a troublesome spot.

After you push the oil thermostat out of the way and drop that side of the pan as far as it will go take your longest flat head screwdriver and manipulate the PS lines far enough to clear the pan. I found that the holes right there in the subframe were a HUGE help.

Hey, look, there's your oil pan. All that work and now we are going to change 3 stupid little o rings.

Take the time to dump the remaining oil from the pan into your drain pan and sit that aside for now.

Now go back under the car and do the following:

At this point I went back under the car with my job light and just closely examined everything under there. I know that is general but you get the idea, you're looking for any evidence of things that should not be occurring.

Now, see your pick up tube? There's an O Ring over by the oil pump that we are going to change........

- Remove it's two 10mm bolts and pull it free, I kept it out for a while to clean things up as it was much more convenient with it not being in the way.

Now that the bottom mating surface is exposed get a shop rag, soak it with Gum Cutter and clean things up, this surface for me was not very difficult to clean hence why I say grab just a shop rag. I also chose to scrub the walls and such surrounding the crankshaft but I'm weird.

You're welcome do the same none the less.

Right below the pick up tube seal area there's two, old, very brittle O Rings we are also going to change........

- Grab your pick and gently remove both of them, compare them in size to the new ones and select the appropriate new ones.

- Take a fingertip of your grease and coat them, one at a time.

- After installing them I took another fingertip of grease and traced them in their passage to ensure they didn't fall out later before the pan was reinstalled.

Now we are going to remove the oil cooler lines from the thermostat and change those O Rings, if you opted to. It's one torx, T30 IIRC. Remove lines, remove the o rings, reinstall and wedge it behind the serpentine belt. The thermostat will pivot where the lines enter to a point to allow you to do this. It will make life easier when reinstalling the pan.

Now, please get out from under the car and stretch.

Ready for more? Alright.

Go to your trusty oil pan and start scrubbing with the Gum Cutter and dish scrubbies or whatever you personally chose to use. Get all the old remnants off! I chose to power wash the inside of my pan and to scrub the stuff out of the outer surfaces while it was out, you, again are welcome to do the same.

See that little square opening? That is your PCV passage, be sure it's free and clear of any debris. Same deal on the bottom of the motor, my passage had all kinds of stuff in it. I just used a medium length flathead to scrape the walls, each little wall is about the size of a medium flathead tip so it works pretty well.

If you choose to pressure wash it do it AFTER you scrub the remnants off of the mating surface. If you do not want to spray it out then after the mating surface is clean:

At this point, to be safe I used compressed air to blow the pan out. I wanted to make sure nothing was in there that shouldn't be after letting it sit overnight, upside down to dry out after pressure washing.

- Apply liquid gasket onto the mating surface tracing the surface the entire way around with a steady bead of sealant.

- Take your foam roller and paint it until it is one nice, steady coat. It will barely look like anything is on it at all but don't worry, it will not leak.

I repeated this 2 times personally to be safe. No rush, the sealant will not set until smashed and out of oxygen's way.

Well, it appears as if you are ready to reinstall the oil pan. Personally I did not want to but my S70 doesn't make a very good garage ornament so I opted to. Not to mention the in laws did not want it living in their garage.

Slide the pan under the car in the same way that it will be secured to the motor.

Being very careful not to smack your sealing ready mating surface I supported the pan from the middle with one open hand. Sit the lip of the oil pan on the subframe over by where that little round metal thing is that you bent out of your way. Proceed to manipulate the PS lines in the same fashion that I described above and she will go right up and in. At this point I installed a bolt at each corner and then loosely installed the remaining bolts. You will then want to go around and SNUG them all, do not completely tighten them just yet.

After they are all installed I opted to proceed to tighten them in a criss cross fashion. I repeated this method twice and then a final time giving one even, firm tug around the bolts following the outer rim of the pan. All that probably wasn't needed but this is a crucial engine element and I do not want to be doing this again any time soon.

Now reverse process for everything you removed prepping to get at the pan itself.

I chose to reinstall things in this order:

- oil thermostat

- oil cooler line retainer

- oil dipstick/tube

- turbo oil drain line

- PS line retainers

- trans. torque mount

- lower side engine mount

That made the most sense to me to make things the easiest they could be.

Double and triple check yourself, slow and steady wins the race here, we are shooting to make this a one time done deal.

Install your oil filter and add your oil and in my case my oil filter magnet that's been there for 60K miles. It's still holding strong!

Well, whenever you're ready to start the car go ahead. I let mine run for about 10 minutes with a frequent eye on the oil pan joints and oil thermostat housing. Once you're confident you're done go grab a bite to eat and think to yourself, "I'm poking awesome."

Congratulations, you are done.

This probably isn't needed either but it will make me feel better. I am going to change my oil and filter in about 500 or 1000 miles again.

I'll be re reading this and editting where needed but I think it's pretty complete, never hurts to check though. I might have missed a thing or two from my personal experience.

Onto the pictures, I'll comment on each one so don't scroll too fast.

Up in the air awaiting the surgery, I didn't sit it up that high and didn't have any problems. I doubt having it up higher would make things easier or more convenient. (And I'm a McD's fan.)

Now here's a garage queen, 1962 Pontiac Bonneville, every factory option, all original and completely restored in every aspect. It even had a new frame installed and rear rockers rebuilt from scratch along with a new, high dollar paint job in the factory white. I buffed it once, 2 coats took 8 hours.

ZERO modifications of any kind you can think of, even has the original (although replaced) factory spec. tires.

This car ALWAYS wins at least 3rd place if not better in every single show my father in law trailers it to.

The area you'll become quite familiar with throughout this oil pan job:

Trap door area with engine mount removed, you can also see the oil thermostat in the bottom corner there.

This is after I removed EVERY thing I had to, pan included, note the homemade diagram.

Here's a few shots right after I removed the pan, note how tarnished things are:

In this one you can see the square PCV passage, keep that in mind for the next one:

Every spec. of stuff you see here came out of that passage, it had to be ~50% clogged and I already changed my PCV system twice in 60K miles (faulty URO parts the first time):

All cleaned up, new O rings installed. The oil cooler lines are not installed into the thermostat at this point, I had to purchase the o rings and rectangular seal. Thanks Justin for picking those up for me!

After I scrubbed the exterior of the pan:

And what a pretty mating surface, sealant was NOT applied:

I wish I would've gotten a shot of the sealant applied and ready to go but I forgot.

Anyhow, these are my findings and hopefully this information will be found by those in need for years and years to come. If it helps you please either reply here or shoot me a PM. Good luck with the job, it'll turn out just fine for ya.

IMO This is a perfect boring weekend job when you have nothing else going on.

Friday night I removed the pan and installed the O Rings so I was ready to slap the pan back on.

Saturday my father in law and I left at 6 AM for Watertown, NY and returned back around 6 PM. I then ran to Justin's and got the seals he picked up for me (thanks again) and installed the oil cooler lines in the thermostat. I also prepped the oil pan for reinstallation.

Sunday I applied the sealant and finished up.

Thanks for reading and could we please get this pinned? If something's incomplete let me know and I will fix it so it's pinnable material.

[JVC]

Thanks a bunch man! I will be doing this in a month or so and I found the same thing... not tons of pics which makes it hard to understand. I wish you had taken some more but hey, with such a word for word detailed writeup + vadis, it shouldn't be that bad!

Thanks Aaron!

-John

[FCP Euro]

WOW, that has to be one of the most in depth "How-To" I have ever seen. Thank you for putting the time into this.

[--Aaron--]

John, no problem. You'll be just fine, print this out and follow it. I wish I wouldve taken more shots as well but I at least got the important ones. Really youre just removing a monkey load of bolts afterall.

FCP, thanks alot! It took me quite a while to create this write up and its nice to have the hard work recognized.

[msm15]

Wow Aaron great job. This will be a huge help.

[flaco]

FYI It is NOT neccesary to remove the turbo oil drain line. It's attached to the engine block directly, not the oil pan. I just tightened the bolts when I did the o-ring job.

[--Aaron--]

thanks msm

true u do not need to remove the turbo oil drain but it is a perfect time to do so if u havent recently

[lcc014]

thanks msm

true u do not need to remove the turbo oil drain but it is a perfect time to do so if u havent recently

Very good write up !!! One question though, where did you support the passenger side of the engine after you took out the right side engine mount ? The picture did not show very clear; only see the floor jack with a piece wood somewhere around passenger side.

Thanks,

Ching-Ho Cheng

[--Aaron--]

Thanks alot! I supported the engine from the passenger side axle brace bracket.

[Gilhuly]

I did this job today. It took just shy of 5 hrs. By removing both the lower motor mount and the torque mount and removing all three ps lines and jacking up the motor, when I took out the last bolts if I wasn't supporting the pan it would have fallen on the floor. I also replaced the dipstick o-ring and the oil cooler o-rings and the lower motor mount.

I'm not the quickest mechanic in the world, but I don't think I could shave a lot more than a half hour or so off my time. I was using imact wrenches for disassembly and had a lift and a tripod jack.

[--Aaron--]

Excellent it looks like we both took the same approach, except for the lift and impact gun.

I suppose for a mechanic time is important but as a do it yourselfer I wasnt much worried about it, never really pay attention to time when in car land.

Great job. :)

[--Aaron--]

May we get this stuck in the useful repair threads in this forum please?

[Gilhuly]

Thanks for the write up. It was a big help. The reason I cited my time was I felt pretty organized and had pretty much every advantage tool-wise(The oil pan bolts literally come off in 3 minutes with air tools). I thought I could come in closer to 3 hrs in advance, but 5 was what it took. I could probably shave a half hour or an hour at the very most. I throw this out for anyone trying to plan the job.

For the record, I haven't been a professional mechanic very long. I would be more accurately rated as a shadetree mechanic with an 850 specialty.

Excellent it looks like we both took the same approach, except for the lift and impact gun.

I suppose for a mechanic time is important but as a do it yourselfer I wasnt much worried about it, never really pay attention to time when in car land.

Great job.

[Abundant Meat]

Awesome write up! I wonder if the reason our systems are prone to failure so often is because of how clogged they get. Maybe another part to doing the PCV system is removing the pan and cleaning it like you did.

So to make sure I understand correctly, the circular UFO looking thing with the screen in it is the PCV passage or is that the oil pump?

How much of a difference do you notice after doing this? Did the ticking go away? Any other noticeable changes?

[--Aaron--]

Thanks for the write up. It was a big help. The reason I cited my time was I felt pretty organized and had pretty much every advantage tool-wise(The oil pan bolts literally come off in 3 minutes with air tools). I thought I could come in closer to 3 hrs in advance, but 5 was what it took. I could probably shave a half hour or an hour at the very most. I throw this out for anyone trying to plan the job.

For the record, I haven't been a professional mechanic very long. I would be more accurately rated as a shadetree mechanic with an 850 specialty.

You made an impressive time man, I meant nothing offensive by my reply.

It makes my Fri/Sat/Sun stretch look foolish! All in all I probably messed with it a total of 7 hours or so. I spent damn near two under the car trying to figure out how the hell I was going to manipulate the pan out. Obviously the second time around would go much quicker. Then there's smoke breaks, yeah.

Again, great job and very impressive time for that being your first time in that neighborhood!

Awesome write up! I wonder if the reason our systems are prone to failure so often is because of how clogged they get. Maybe another part to doing the PCV system is removing the pan and cleaning it like you did.

So to make sure I understand correctly, the circular UFO looking thing with the screen in it is the PCV passage or is that the oil pump?

How much of a difference do you notice after doing this? Did the ticking go away? Any other noticeable changes?

Thanks alot man, the write up took me quite a while to create.

A clogged up PCV can be a mechanically fatal issue if ignored and allowed to stay bad enough for a long period of time, certainly. I think removing the pan and cleaning it out along with the PCV passage and oil pan o rings would be a great thing to do to prolong the life of your motor. You sure do learn alot seeing the bottom exposed with the pan off, that's for sure.

The UFO looking thing is the oil pick up tube, the square opening is the PCV passage that eventually connects to the lower PCV box opening. The oil pump actually sits right behind the crank pulley.

The most noticeable improvement is cold start chatter, it almost completely eliminated it. My tick has reduced to a very faint first few minutes of a dead cold start. It is no longer ticking if I shut down and then start back up when the motor's warm or at operating temp. Basically I am just telling myself it is what it is, I have 180K miles almost and the motor is not going to be dead quiet as if it were new. Overall though the improvement is very noticeable.

I bet if I had an oil pressure gauge it would show an increase as well due to the very old and brittle sump o rings that I changed, but I cannot be sure as I do not have a gauge. I can tell you that motor oil splashes around much better when removing the oil cap and having a look.