The world's longest oil change
During my usual oil check while getting gas yesterday, I was alarmed to find that the oil on my dipstick was the color and consistency of a chocolate milkshake. After slowly and nervously driving back home, I took a look in the radiator to see if it was leaking into the oil galleys -- I didn't expect a leak in my head gasket, since it's only a few years old, and the engine itself isn't all that old (my dad's mechanic found it in a crate on a shelf in some garage in New York about 10 years ago). The radiator level looked fine, so I looked under the oil cap to see what I could see. There were a few good-sized beads of water on the underside of the oil cap. Things were not looking good. I stared at the engine for a while, trying to think of where the water could have come from. Then it hit me -- the cowl vent drain! It had been raining cats and dogs for the past few nights, so even though my cowl vent was closed and sealed fairly well, enough water must have leaked into the vent, drained down through the rubber drain tube, and onto the top of the engine, where it flowed into the valve cover breather holes. At least, I hope that's what happened.

So today, I moved the cowl vent drain tube so that it rests on the choke cable, pointing it at the ground instead of the engine (I'll lengthen it later), and drained the oil. Although I had warmed up the engine prior to draining the oil, in order to bake out the water, I figured I should probably also remove the oil pan and clean it out, since I'd never done that, and it probably wouldn't bake out as well as the rest of the engine. I found the bolts holding it on relatively easy to remove (permanent lubrication by engine oil is much better than 50 years of rust), but the gasket had a good hold on the oil pan. A small pry bar helped remove the gasket's grip, and the oil pan was free. Free to get stuck on the tie rod, that is. I checked the shop manual to see if there were any tricks to removing the oil pan, but found none. Then I remembered that all of the standard maintenance on these old trucks was intended to be done while the truck was up on jacks or a lift. I jacked up the front end, placed the engine cross-member on jack stands, and was able to easily remove the oil pan from there.

There was about a centimeter of sludge at the bottom of the oil pan, plus a few little scraps of metal -- about what I had expected. I used engine de-greaser on the inside and outside of the oil pan, and let it sit while I went to Checker for a replacement gasket. Well, they didn't have a gasket, but they had some 12"x20" neoprene gasket material that I though would fit. It would have fit, if I were repairing a lawnmower engine or something, not my 235 ci inline-six. Of course, I realized this after getting home and looking at the oil pan and thinking, "that's a little more than 20 inches long." So I called Checker back to see if they had the actual gasket, and they said they could order me one by Tuesday morning (Monday being Labor Day). I then removed, cleaned with de-greaser, dried, and replaced the metal screen covering the oil sump. I rinsed and dried the oil pan (shorting out my roommate's hair dryer in the process somehow), and just bolted it back in place with 4 bolts, awaiting its new gasket.

Since Checker's open tomorrow (don't they let their poor employees get any holidays? They were also open on the 4th of July), I'll get some more engine de-greaser and gasket remover, and clean off the old gasket from the bottom of the engine block. I think I might paint the bottom of the oil pan with POR-15, as well, while I have it off.