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My sister was driving my IS250 and the car stalled on the highway. She looks underneath and sees oil coming out. I rush over and tow the car home. When I look under the car for the leak I find this. The bolt area to the oil pan is all cracked. I have no idea what caused this. Now my question is does the engine shut itself off to protect itself from low oil? The engine won't even crank, but there's also no oil. So I'm hoping this is a protection mechanism to save the engine from seizing. Also how difficult would it be to replace this oil pan?
Your sister would have got a "Low Oil " level warning and if not remedied then as more oil is lost you will get a "Low Oil Pressure" warning and then if not shut down the engine will go on to eventually sieze up, At some point there would have been an EML also I suspect. I am not aware of a self protection system on this engine due to low oil pressure, but hopefully for your sake there is (but the lack of cranking action is not good)
As far as I know nobody touched that bolt. I did just got the car the other day from a private seller. Is it possible that my sister hit something and it hit the oil pan and did this?
Ok so I just put a 22mm socket on the engine and tried to crank it by hand. I tried this both in park and neutral. Doesn't move clockwise or counterclockwise. I also tried with a bigger breaker bar but with limited room to turn it. I assume the engine is seized.
I also removed the bolt though there wasn't much effort in doing this. You can see better what trauma that has occurred to the area. I know I need a new engine at this point but what I wanna know is what might have caused this. Like I said I just bough the car and I myself have driven it for an hour before letting my sister drive it. I did crawl underneath the car and check for leaks before warning her to please be aware of the gauges for any lights that may come on. This is because I had done work myself to the car, like changing all the fluids, the rear left break caliper, and the front left cv axle. I can't think of a situation where what I did had any effect on this area. The damage is the back right of the engine.
I need to know what occurred so that I know who to blame for this and maybe try to get some money to help with replacing the engine, and to avoid this problem again in the future. Can anyone tell if this looks recent or could have been broken few weeks or months ago? Also... can i put a 3.0 engine in this? Just wondering.
**EDIT**
Looking at the photos an idea that popped in my head was that maybe at some point this engine had a bad motor mount. In some photos you can see that this upper oil pan has this metal bar sticking out, but what you can't see in the photos is that it isn't connected to anything. It just sticks out, just above the engine sub frame. What I'm thinking is what if the motor mounts were bad that it cause this metal bar to hit the sub-frame and crack it? Is that possible? Maybe someone jacked up the engine from the oil pan for some reason and this happened?
On a another forum I'm on countless members have torqued pan bolts to manufacturers spec (alum pan, not steel) and split the pan just like that.
How does this happen? In those cases the threads are oiled and everyone reuses the **one time use** crush washer.
In doing so, the bolt comes up to torque at nearly half the force. Continued pressure being applied splits the pan wide open. In short, when a bolt quits turning something has to give and the cast aluminium pan is the weak link.
That may be the case here?
Is it possible to reach torque spec and have a latent pan crack after a few heat cycles? I suspect so.
Sorry. Good luck finding a new engine. This is really unfortunate.
Edit Never mind. Post is in error.
Did that come to you that way? Stock on the 350 is M12-1.25 pitch. This is just a picture but that bolt is not 1.25 pitch is it?
Last edited by 2013FSport; 08-23-17 at 10:45 AM.
Reason: Wrong bolt
That's the way the engine came. No idea if the bolt is M12-1.25 but I can find out. The bolt size is 12mm. But what would the reason be to remove this bolt? This oil pan is very different on a AWD car, so replacing anything here is very difficult. Maybe a leak that someone thought could be fixed by tightening it? But then again, are these engines known to leak from the oil pan?
Maybe the private seller knew this problem already. First thing would've been putting it on a lift to inspect it overall. Now your best bet is seeing if the cost is worth repairing it.
Someone could have hit the oil pan on a pot hole or something, that is what happened to my car. I bought it with a blown motor that was oil starved and would barely turn over. I removed the spark plugs and was able to rotate it with a huge breaker bar. Tell the mechanic it'll be easier to drop the engine and trans together because of the motor not being able to spin.
Honestly I would rather change the motor myself but time is preventing me. I had a mechanic look at it and he thinks the engine just randomly seized and threw something at the oil pan. He thinks the car was bought at a auction and the buyer put thick oil in the motor to keep it running quiet. Not sure about that, cause the car ran just fine other than a quick clicking noise when it starts, but everyone here says that's perfectly normal for these engines. Honestly I can't find any particular spot where something had impacted the oil pan, so it could be true. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Though the mechanic worked on my Corvette in the past and had ****ed it up so bad that I had literally rebuilt and repainted my car to correct his mistakes. He does mostly auto body. So I'm taking his opinion with a grain of salt, but without any visible impact to the oil pan all I can go by is that maybe it threw a rod or something and cracked the oil pan. But the idea of the engine just having a **** randomly seems far fetched, even for an engine with 174k miles. I put fresh new 7 quarts of oil and a filter just before it was driven. Maybe little or no oil pressure would seize the engine and crack the engine?
Oh man, that really sucks. I'm sorry that happened to you. I would also be suspicious of this theory your mechanic friend has, doesn't sound very likely to me. From the picture you posted, it looks like that bolt was over tightened and cracked that housing.
Here's an update on the situation. Was engine hunting for a while and finally found an engine with 117,000 miles and from a IS250 2010. Engine is oxidized as hell but I know it runs. My valve covers are painted red and look much better than what's on the new engine, so I took them off and removed the spark plugs I had recently put in it. Yes Autolite Iridiums. I can already here the hatred coming from the internet. Anyway, one of the spark plugs is totally destroyed. I'm still interested in why this engine has gone to **** and this maybe a clue. I can't tell if it's crushed or melted. You can see it's the rear driver side where I got the plug, as that port hole on the intake is all burnt looking. Maybe the mechanic is right in that this engine threw a rod?
**EDIT**
Cleaned off that bad spark plug and it looks like the piston must have flattened it. Which means it threw a rod. But throwing rods are usually the result of low oil pressure or low oil. But if the piston hit the spark plug then would it damage he oil pan? Sounds like it failed on the upstroke, but in order to hit the pan it would need to be on the downstroke. There's also metal shavings in the oil so it suggest that it was due to a lack of oil. That's what I think anyway.
08-22-17, 08:49 PM
Massive oil leak 07 IS250
