Doing my front cover/water pump gasket/oil pan gaskets this week. Do I need any loctite or thread sealer on any of these bolts? I figured some sealer on the water pump bolts...but not sure? what does everybody else do? I'm going with the pan/gasket/gasket maker sandwich combo on the pan. The timing cover goes on dry, just the gasket, no rtv right?water pump is gasket only as well, right? Assembly lube on the oil pump gears, and a dab of lithium grease on the crank shaft surface.

Just for grins here, about how much time does all this take, I'm going to have 3-4 hours a night for 3 nights and then hopefully 2 full days available on the weekend to do it in. Should I be done by then?!!

thanks, pwaltrip

 

if you hit it hard you could finish it 4 hours, never doing before you should be able to complete it in two nights.
No loctite, never loctite when installing steel bolt in an aluminum parts if I want to get them apart again, personally I use anti-seize on anything I thread into aluminum.
If you dont like messing with the bolts, cut out a couple pieces of cardboards that are somewhat close to your gaskets and stick the bolts into the cardboard so you know where they go. Personally i find that to be half the fun, guessing if i have the right bolt or not.
The radiator can stay in place just cover it with a couple pieces of cardboard, make sure you break the crank bolt free before removing the belt.
You will want to be able to jack the front of the truck up high, in order to get the oil pan down without removing the front frame support.
If your not replacing the oil pump leave it alone, if you do assembly lube.
there are a couple water pump bolts that go into the water jacket that need sealent, just use it on all the long bolts.
Once again I “personally” use a fine layer of RTV instead of gasket cement, to hold the gaskets in place. RTV gets a bad rap because people put on big globs of it and wonder why it breaks off and end up in the oil pan and radiator, in moderation used correctly it is fine, that’s your call.
It’s a pretty straight forward job, if LR had used 2 bolts instead of a studs there would not even be a reason to remove the oil pan.
BTW the rave is wrong there are 2 more bolts in the oil pan than what it says.

 

Sounds good! Every body says jack the body up to help with the oilpan, anywhere specific to put the jack?

 

I use a hydrualic bumper jack on my brush guard it does not look like an option for you. Plus the jack is as old as me, back when car had metal bumpers.
I guess you could use you bottle jack and stick a couple of jack stands under the frame rails.
You only want to jack the body as high as it will go not lift the truck, if you can remove the front frame support i dont think it is a issue.
Some of the bolts were stripped on mine so I did not remove it , so it was just as easy for me to lift the body up.

 

Anywhere but under the axle, you want the front axle to droop down. My frame brace too had stripped bolt heads, so removing wasn't an option w/out a major undertaking. BTW, when I did mine, the biggest pain the the **** was the crank bolt.

 

FYI The overhaul manual calls for Loctite 242 on the first 3 threads for all front cover bolts. Looking at pictures of the OEM bolts, and they definitely have some blue stuff on the threads as well