Oil pan gasket

[Eric Sabin]

Hello all. First night as a member here in the forum. I will be pulling my oil pan on my 05 Hemi in the near future. Im getting close to oil change time anyways. My oil pressure has been acting up for about a week now. Cold starts like in the morning leaving for work and afternoon coming home on start up i have no oil pressure. I can shut it off and start back up and pressure builds like normal. From what i have read, this is a fairly common issue on the 3rd gen and is caused by sludge clogging the pick up tube screen. Im at 136,000 miles. Can i reuse the oil pan gasket? Or at this stage should i just replace the oil pump and start fresh with new gasket and thoroughly cleaned oil pan? Not trying to sound like a dummy but im just on a budget at the moment and cant really afford to replace parts that most likely won't be a cause for the problem. Thank you in advance.

 

[chrisp2493]

The Hemi has a windage tray built into the oil pan gasket. A new one is about $45-$70. In my opinion, just inspect the pan gasket, see if it’s reusable. It’s normally stuck on there pretty good, I’ve had to use a flat scraper to separate the pan from the engine so it depends if you damage the gasket badly or not. I put a new windage tray on a few months ago, then I had to rebuild the engine again. I reused the gasket, I just cleaned it up, and put rtv sealant on both sides

 

[Robb W]

On a new windage tray is rtv sealant required? I cant find any procedure that states to use it?

Thanks

 

[Karlsweg]

I would plumb in mechanical oil pressure gauge and make sure it’s not a sending unit going bad first.

 

[Spoonsize]

For the cost of a sending unit I would just replace it. Seems there have been a few go bad recently that have behaved just like this.

 

[RonJon '06]

On a new windage tray is rtv sealant required? I cant find any procedure that states to use it?

Thanks

I put a small dab of RTV on the four corners of the engine block, where the block meets the front cover and the rear main seal. A new windage tray should come with a small tube of black RTV.

 

[Robb W]

Yeah, mine came in a kit and I didnt see any but I guess I'll have to get some. Thanks!

I did notice that the Dodge shop manual doesn't make any mention of using RTV.