Thread: Removing gbox pan on 3.0

The tape measure indicated at least a 40mm shortfall so the cross-member had to go. The fuel tank only had to be lowered enough at the front to gain access to the nuts on the 2 retaining bolts. Time for another cuppa before snapping the filter tube and getting the pan out one way or another.

I was told by the guy who did mine that he snapped the filter off and then cut the pan in half to get it out past the crossmember.
The steel pan was then slid on past the crossmember with the gasket stuck to it with a very small amount of vaseline.
Hope that helps.
Cheers Graeme

Thanks Graeme, that sounds about right, although I don't know how he got the metal one in without removing the cross-member. On my 3rd attempt to get the pan and gasket in place I had the gasket lightly siliconed to the pan.

What a PITA of a job - I can't see myself ever removing the pan again to replace the filter. The heads on the new screws are so small and with no flats the front ones were almost impossible to start the threads using 2 fingers. Oh well, its back together now but will need to check the level when the oil's up to temperature tomorrow although it was over 30 deg today so should already be about right.

Good stuff graeme, we do a few of these and yes they are annoyingly and unnecessarily hard to get off/on. The petrol v8 ones aren't too horrific I actually remove the rh engine pipe.

Jc

Hi Justin,
I was going to go down the track of removing the exhaust then contemplated the issue of getting a possibly sheared off stud out of the manifold and opted for the safer option of removing the cross member. I also cut a few threads off the bolts holding the heat shield on, they were just that little bit to long.

Hi marty, I agree there is a risk, but the use of crc and the fact that lr use high quality fasteners means I have never encountered a problem yet :-)

Jc

The job wasn't finished as oil was dripping from around the pan the next morning because some bolts weren't fully home so hadn't clamped the pan. Quite a few of the original bolts were corroded so their casing threads should have been cleaned with a tap before fitting the replacement stainless bolts. Thinking that stainless was stronger than the original bolts I proceeded to tighten them until they came to a proper stop, except for the last one that sheared its head. Fortunately the broken bolt was accessible enough to drill a 4 mm hole through its centre to either allow it to be extracted or tap a new thread if not. A small bolt and nut hopefully will reduce the leaking for the next few days.

The lessons learnt are that I should not have continued removing the original pan when the corroded bolts were encountered until I had a 6 mm tap on hand and that stainless steel bolts, these ones anyway, have no more tensile strength than mild steel ones and possibly less.

Graeme, Stainless bolts are a trap as you have just found out. They are brittle and the threads will pick up unless you use anti seize on them.
In aviation we use them for non stressed panels only for aesthetic purposes or if we are operating in a corrosive environment. I always use a nickel, not copper anti seize.
Cheers, Graeme