oil pump removal

[Tobert]

Got the front transaxle out today. Pulled the sump pan ... eww. There are brass _flakes_ in there. It looks like the engine was recently reassembled, so I'm hoping it's break-in debris. I got all the bolts out of the oil pan (what a pain), but the pan won't come off. I guess it's not the source of the leak

Either way it's going to come off somehow ... if I break it, I guess I'll have to find one. It's getting tempting to just order a crate engine at this point, though. I still haven't found any obvious sources of the oil leak and have found plenty of other things that make me nervous.

Would that new 3.5 people have been talking about bolt in directly? I can handle the wiring without too much trouble but don't want to have to fab too much in the way of exhaust and brackets.

I'll update with some pics of the pan crud later when my wife relinquishes the laptop...

Looks like I do have to pull the pan ... was searching for parts and found this:

[Tobert]

I got the rest of the oil pan off. Sometimes you just have to listen to dad ... I was trying to pry it off and generally avoid beating on it with a hammer. My dad said, "get a 2x4 and thump it until it comes free." Works like a charm and I didn't even damage the pan!

Anyways, good news (or maybe bad). Judging by color differences, somebody rebuilt the engine recently since the crank, rods, and pistons look brand new while the rest of the engine is severely tarnished. I would have thought they would at least clean that up, but whatever.

Here is the picture of the junk I found in the sump pan:


My current guess is that's break-in junk. I hope. Second opinions?

Here are some pictures of the bottom end of the engine. I now know why the pan has to come off the replace the oil pump. I'm not sure why the previous person working on it didn't do that step - I always replace oil pumps when replacing bearings. I don't think they replaced the seals around the pump either, which is probably where my oil leak came from.

Behold:



I hope this isn't a hackjob where the bearings will go again soon if they had spun in the block. Maybe they started knocking and the owner fixed it right away, but there's no evidence of any of the rods being new (all have what appear to be scars for being knocked off with a hammer).