[dcdoug]

Originally Posted by Bobcat

Doug ... I had the same problem with my pan bolts .... they were too long , but short enough that when they were installed along with a lock washer , they gave the impression of being tight and the pan being secure . However , that was because they had bottomed out ... oil pan leaked like the devil and took a while to find out why . I kept retorqueing the bolts and it didn`t help . I have to pull my pan now to change out the gasket and am real interested to see if the Mr Gasket bolts can be made to work , otherwise , I`ll use studs with blue Locktite .
An alternative is to shorten all the bolts ... but that would be a real pita .

Bob

Be careful about continuing to re-torque bolts. I had one with a flaw in it and it sheared off (don't know what grade of bolt it was, I didn't install it, but am replacing them all). You want to see a REAL PITA, spend some time on your back drilling out a bolt and removing it with an extractor. Uh, and don't break the extractor like I did. 10x more of a PITA. Then you get to deal with any thread damage that may have occurred and installing a repair kit, which I will likely need to do.

I think the longer bolts will be fine going into the timing cover and maybe the rear bolts too. the ones along the side will definitely need to be cut down. Compared to the above, a reciprocating saw with a hacksaw blade should make this fairly easy.