I know most of you have looked at your oil pan and wondered if the oil pan can be removed easily. The answer is yes. You can remove the oil pan completely but you will need a few heavy-duty tools like a bottle jack or an engine hoist. The first thing you going to need to do is jack up the truck so the axle hangs freely. Then you want to drain all the oil from the pan. In my case, I had to do tie rod ends and a new drag link so this was all removed. I removed the wheels from the axle and allowed the axle to just hang freely. Loosen up both engine mounts bolts till the nuts are to the end of the threads. Now set up an engine hoist and hook it to the front hoist ring of the block.
Lift the engine carefully watching the fan and clearance of everything. Once the engine is lifted remove all the 10mm bolts in the oil pan. Using a putty knife pry the pan free from the block. There will be plenty of room to slide the pan around and loosen the two 10mm bolts that hold the pickup tube on the driver side of the block and then the two bolts in the flange of the pickup tube.
At this point, there is nothing holding the pan in place, and should about fall out the rear of the engine. You will be able to scrap the bottom of the block clean with a putty knife and then scrap and wash the oil pan clean.
The gasket I used was from NAPA. The oil pickup tube part of the gasket is perforated so it can be cut free from the main oil pan gasket. I opted to do so because I wanted to glue the pan gasket to the pan using grey RTV silicone. Then a thin coat of grey RTV on the pickup tube flange too. Once it is mostly cured up you can place the pickup tube in the pan and slide it back into position. You are going to install the pickup tube bolts first and mount them all back together this will help in holding the oil pan in place again. Now you can start hand installing all the pan bolts back into the oil pan and hand torque them once all the bolts are installed.
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