"Stupidru" (Schm1an)
11/21/2016 at 09:43 • Filed to: None
2
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"Stupidru" (Schm1an)
11/21/2016 at 09:43 • Filed to: None | 2
| 21 |
Let me preface this by saying I totally deserved this.
So my car (04 TL) is getting to the point where things are starting to need replacing. Brake calipers are seizing, tie rods are loose, motor mounts are getting thin, etc. What I didn’t plan on replacing fixing was the oil pan. About 2 weeks ago I ordered new tie rods, got them in the mail and promptly swapped them out over the weekend. In the process, I ripped one of the steering rack boots, so I ordered 2 more and as soon as those got in the mail I thought I’d go in the garage and replace the bad with the good. You know, now that I’m a seasoned tie rod veteran, I thought this would be extremely easy. 20 minutes after dinner, and be back before another lackluster Thursday Night Football game starts. Well 20 minutes turned into 2 hours of stressful panicking. I went in the garage, wheeled over the jack, and slid it under my car. Since this was going to be an easy fix, I just glanced for the first silver thing I saw, put the jack underneath it, and went to town pumping. Once the car got up in the air I heard a big *BANG* and thought to myself “wtf?!” and looked underneath only to find a thin stream of dark fluid dripping onto the concrete. Oh crap. I proceeded to put some jack stands under the pinch welds and get the car in a safe position before I got underneath it to check it out. I let the jack down and looked underneath to find this:
ohcrapohcrapohcrapijustbrokemycar
*deep breath*
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhwtfamigoingtodo??!!??!!
Step 1: Drink a beer and calm down.
Now I’ve never encountered anything like this, so I went inside, found !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and decided it was the only thing I could do in order to get to work the next day. So off to Napa I go (in the wife’s car), basically re-assuring the only guy in the store that I’m not a complete redneck, and that I’m a somewhat classy guy because I drive a fancy Honda and please don’t judge me. JB Weld, Blake Cleaner, JB Weld, new oil, JB Weld, more shop rags, JB Weld, and some hope and dreams. Back to the garage where I had slid an oil pan underneath and let whatever was left in the engine drain out. Sprayed it with Brake Cleaner, let it dry, rinse, wash, repeat. After a few minutes to make sure no more oil was seeping from the crack, I was left with this:
The previous day at work, somebody was cleaning out their desk and left out some wire wheels to use with angle grinders, so I took one (never thinking I’d need it right away) and scuffed up the surface to give the JB Weld something to grab to.
Sprayed with more Brake Cleaner, let it dry, and went to town with the JB Weld. First, I used the putty and smeared it thick over the crack, then learning from Torch’s post, I cut up the beer can I just drank from, and rolled the aluminum flat, then trimmed to a size slightly larger than the crack, rolled the rest of my JB Weld putty into a snake, covered the perimeter of the beer can and made a ‘pan’ for any future oil leaks to rest inside of. Redneck status achieved. Now I had gotten a little carried away with how satisfied I was with being a redneck that I forgot to take a picture, so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that there’s a Coors Light can holding my car’s life blood inside. For a little more insurance, I used the entire 10oz of my JB Weld 2-part epoxy KwikWeld, and covered the beer can in 2 layers of this goop.
Wait 5 minutes and filled it up. Now I know the cure time is longer than 5 minutes, but when you’re a real redneck you don’t read instructions. Just git’r’dun. Or something to that effect. Now this was last Wednesday, and since I’ve probably put on 200 miles and haven’t seen a drip of stray oil underneath my car, despite friends placing bets on how long it’ll take to fail due to oil loosening the epoxy, loosening due to heat cycling, and failing just because it’s a redneck fix.
So there you go. I hope I didn’t jinx myself, but it worked. This is not a permanent fix, but I don’t have 6 hours to replace the oil pan on my car in 20-30 degree weather, so this is a temporary fix until Spring. If I can make it that long.
There’s a happy ending though, and that’s that I did succeed in swapping out the torn steering rack boot with a new one... so, yeah.
adamftw
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 09:52 |
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If it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid. The oil pan in my boat is covered with Qwiksteel and rust reforming paint. I don’t plan on ever swapping that oil pan.
Urambo Tauro
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 10:01 |
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I used J-B Weld to fix some leaks on my oil pan earlier this year and it’s still holding so far. I REALLY hated to go that route, but this is NOT an easy car to swap the pan on. I hope it holds up for you.
AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 10:11 |
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I did basically the same on the transmission side pan of my old Cadillac. I’d just had the engine and trans out to do some work on them and was prying on the trans to get it to drop into its mounts. Apparently I pried too hard in the wrong place. I wasn’t about to take that shit back apart again. Ended up being permanent, never leaked a drop.
TysMagic
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 10:14 |
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Outsider thoughts, I’d be with your friends taking bets on how long it’ll last. Car guy thoughts, I’d do the exact same and be dang proud of the redneck job I did
E92M3
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 10:17 |
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I don’t see how that could last till spring. Can you borrow someones garage for a day?
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Stupidru
> E92M3
11/21/2016 at 10:45 |
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I *could* do it in my own garage, but the concrete floor beneath me won’t be much warmer than the ambient outdoor temp, and I don’t feel like spending 6 hours with a frozen back side. A friend of mine is a mechanic and will be doing an alignment for me in the coming weeks and said while he’s got the car up in the air, he’ll take a look at what it would take for him to replace it. If he can do it for under $300 all-in, it’s a no-brainer and would definitely help me sleep better at night.
Worst-case scenario is it lets loose. My wife and I can carpool to work for a week while I get the new oil pan and fix it, cold back and all.
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Stupidru
> Urambo Tauro
11/21/2016 at 10:49 |
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Thanks! Yeah, a few people on the forums have replaced the pan and I just don’t feel like spending 5-6 hours laying on cold concrete, in a cold garage, working on a cold car. That being said, I think May/June should be warm enough to replace it. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just put a space heater in the garage for an hour before I get out there and just suck it up.
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Stupidru
> TysMagic
11/21/2016 at 10:56 |
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As an engineer, I’m a little torn. Yes, I’m proud of the fix-it job I did, but I know the damaging effects that the combination of heat cycling, polymer creep, and the road salt used here in Wisconsin won’t make it stick any better than it is
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Stupidru
> adamftw
11/21/2016 at 10:57 |
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What did you do to prep the pan before you patched it? Is it an aluminum pan or iron?
Mattbob
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 10:57 |
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If you roughed it up fairly well, I would bet a beer that it holds till you get the ambition to replace it. Unless the crack in the aluminum propagates. That’s the only thing I would be worried about.
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Stupidru
> AMGtech - now with more recalls!
11/21/2016 at 10:57 |
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How long ago was that?
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Stupidru
> Mattbob
11/21/2016 at 11:00 |
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Agreed, and now just thinking about it I should’ve drilled through both ends of the crack to arrest it. Oh well. Barring any rouge snow/ice chunks in the coming months, I don’t see anything that should put enough stress on the pan to give it reason to spread. Except the massive torque from this Honda 3.2L *lol*
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adamftw
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 11:05 |
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Steel, I drained the oil and let it “drip” out for a couple days, hit it with some solvent to clean it up, scratch it up with sandpaper, and then went to town.
Stapleface
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 11:44 |
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For what it’s worth, JB Weld is some strong shit. Back in 1985 my Stepfather JB Welded a nickle to the side of a block of a Honda CRX that threw a rod. Last time I saw the car (about 2 years ago) it was still running on that same engine.
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AMGtech - now with more recalls!
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 11:51 |
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5-6 years? Drove the car for another year after before selling it.
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E92M3
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 12:13 |
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Use a space heater (turn it on hours before you intend to start working), dress in layers, lay on 2-3 pieces of cardboard.
Rykilla303
> Stupidru
11/21/2016 at 14:33 |
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with the previous owner, my truck had been stolen and the steering column broken. I put it together with multiple tubes of JB Weld, and it’s been solid for 5 years... that stuff is magic for kludging things.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Stupidru
12/06/2016 at 16:30 |
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Dude. I have extensive experience with JB Weld. I’ve used it all kinds of places, all kinds of surfaces, et cetera. I’d trust that repair for about five minutes. Here’s what I’d try:
1. Get a scrap of aluminum and cut it so that it’s about an inch longer overall than the crack.
2. Drill and tap some holes in the bottom of the oil pan, maybe 10/32 in size. Or use self-tapping screws might be better. Shortest screws possible, so as to avoid the oil pump pickup. (You might even do some research to figure out where it’s located.)
3. Clean and scuff the surface again as you did before and drill the crack-arresting holes.
4. Slather the aluminum scrap/patch with HIGH-TEMP silicone.
5. Screw the patch to the pan.
I’d trust that repair for an hour or two.
6. Replace the oil pan.
Don’t get me wrong: I love JB Weld. Adhesives in general. I get all giddy when I have a new application for it. But the heat, the oil, WTF polymer creep is, and all the rest, I wouldn’t rely on it in this situation. Please see above.
MikeP3
> Stupidru
12/06/2016 at 16:36 |
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“This is not a permanent fix...”
Oh, it IS a permanent fix. Time will go on and you will never get around to it. That’s fine though.
I’ve glued things to oil pans (like a hot oil-return line from a turbo) with JBW in the past and it lasts forever. One trick: mix some chopped steel wool into the JBW for extra strength.
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Stupidru
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
12/20/2016 at 23:00 |
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Believe me, I’m an engineer and I don’t trust my fix either. That being said, we (engineers) are inherently lazy. I’m also not going to fix it because our high temperatures have been somewhere south of 0 Fahrenheit lately.
It’s been holding fine since.
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Stupidru
> E92M3
08/22/2017 at 14:23 |
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I’m happy to report it’s been going strong since the day of reckoning without leaking a drop.