Oil Pan Bolt hole stripped....how do I fix??

I had the same problem. Tried to silicone it, but no luck. Good luck. I have a bit of a drip thats annoying but no problems other than that. Does keep the underside well lubed...

I'm not sure how you can fix it without pulling the pan and trying to re-establish the threads. Obviously you don't want to do that while in the car and risk metal shavings into your oil system.

The only thing that comes to mind as a temporary fix is to drain the oil and insert the drain plug with a bead of epoxy. It will then be permanent and won't allow you to drain the oil from that side. But it could buy you time until you can fix it properly or replace the oil pan completely when it's more conveniant.

good luck...

replace it and be done, Unfortunatey no easy foxes will work long term.

use liquid teflon from nappa. or take it to one of the garages close by and have them retap your pan. they do it with grease so that way you dont get metal in the pan. if your still able to tighten up your plug pretty snug, just use the liquid teflon

Weld the proper size nut to the outside of the pan in that location. Then just thread the original plug into it like normal.
Kinda like the way you can do it when you need a new o2 sensor bung.

monte87 said:

replace it and be done, Unfortunatey no easy foxes will work long term.

Click to expand...

X2

Bring it to a shop with welding skill. They can drill out the old threads with a drill bit packed with axle grease which will catch the shavings and keep them out of your oil pan. If you are still worried about it, have them put a rare-earth magnet on the oil pan near the drilling area. These things are awesome and will gather any shavings the drill bit misses - there won't be any. Once the threads are gone they can weld the hole and re-tap. A good welder will be able to lay down enough metal to make it as strong and as oil-tight as new.

Just a word on rare-earth magnets. These little things have some serious pull. I have one on ALL of my oil filters and you would be amazed at the amount of ferrous dust that the oil filter accumulates that it previously didn't. This simple magnet will improve oil filtration by a huge amount. Don't mistake neodynum/rare-earth magnets with the ones you use on your refridgerator - different animals, those.

http://www.lislecorp.com/tool_detail.cfm?detail=1168

http://www.timesert.com/html/drainplug.html
http://www.timesert.com/html/drain-plug-repair.pdf

stang&2Birds said:

http://www.lislecorp.com/tool_detail.cfm?detail=1168

http://www.timesert.com/html/drainplug.html
http://www.timesert.com/html/drain-plug-repair.pdf

Click to expand...

good links

jinshiyang said:

The only thing that comes to mind as a temporary fix is to drain the oil and insert the drain plug with a bead of epoxy. thread insert helicoil It will then be permanent and won't allow you to drain the oil from that side.

Click to expand...

????
Wow, that's very wrong and horrible advice in many ways.

Many thanks...

I have a 2004 Mustang GT. I also stripped the oil pan drain bolt. I came here from a Google search, and read the advice.

I decided to go with the oversized oil pan bolt solution (less than $4). I took a bit of time to remove the stripped bolt. And I did not get the oversized bolt on quite right - it resulted in a bit of a leak (not a gusher - more like drip, drip, drip).

I then had a friend help me - I thiought we would need a big re-tapping job, and he knew how to do this. However, my friend took a look and removed, then re-installed, the oversized bolt. He thought I originally installed it incorrectly. He said it was not a matter of having installed it at something other than 90 degrees to the oil pan surface (which is what I thought was the problem). More likely that I did not tighten it quite enough (understandable, since I did not want to create another stripped bolt problem).

He just removed it, re-installed it (tightening it a bit more), and it sealed perfectly.

The only other issue could be metal shards created in this process. I went in to the hole with a magnetic screwdriver, and managed to remove quite a few shards. This took some time - I kept removing shards until all I could find were very small bits (i.e. smaller than a grain of salt). Then I flushed the entire engine by pouring about 10 quarts of new motor oil into the engine, with the drain bolt out. Then I sealed it up, put on a new filter (Fram), put in the proper oil - Mobil 1 synthetic 20W 50 (as per manufacturer reccomendations) - and that was it.

I have run the car about 200 miles since then, and the oil pressure needle is exactly where it should be - it has not moved. All seems well. However, I will take the advice of one of the posters here and put a few rare earth magnets on the pan (near the drain hole) and on the oil filter as well.

Many thanks for all the advice - your help here enabled me to keep a potentially large problem to a managemable size.

Many thanks again...