Fixed!!
Okay, so my friend and I worked on this yesterday... started at 10am and didn't finish until 4:30pm (with a 15 minute lunch break).
We removed all the nuts and bolts around the bottom half of the oil pan (12 of them). Then we had to "drill" out the drain plug because it was cross threaded. We got another plug with a gasket and another gasket for the oil pan itself. Put it back...
Most of the time was spent on trying to get the drain plug out of there. We took it to a few repair shops and one of them was kind enough to drill it out for us. It's all about having the right tools.
Anyways the problem now is that there is a bit of a leak (not from the plug itself), but from around the oil pan gasket. Looks like it might not have been firmly tightened. I will go back today and tighten it again just to make sure. But this sure beats spending $300 + labor on a new oil pan. We did it for the cost of the paint remover and the oil pan gasket. Which was a total of SIX DOLLARS.
1) Shamrock Tires was VERY helpful. The repair guy - John - spent about a good 20 minutes trying to remove the old plug. He finally sawed it off and then drilled through it.
2) O'rileys was kind enough to give us some tapping part (which we didn't end up using)
3) AAA Machine Shop retapped the drain
4) Advance Auto Parts gave us a new gasket for the drain plug (They also gave me a free plug several months ago)
All these shops are located in Wichita, Kansas. I can't believe there are so many nice people out there. We saved us a lot of money. I'm a broke student so I was very thankful to all these people helping us out.
I'm not that mechanically inclined, but the more I work on the car, the more confidence I am gaining. Even though this took us about 6 hours. I could probably do it again in 3 hours if I had to since now I know what to do.
THANK YOU Everyone for replying and helping me out. Your posts are greatly appreciated
Regards
We removed all the nuts and bolts around the bottom half of the oil pan (12 of them). Then we had to "drill" out the drain plug because it was cross threaded. We got another plug with a gasket and another gasket for the oil pan itself. Put it back...
Most of the time was spent on trying to get the drain plug out of there. We took it to a few repair shops and one of them was kind enough to drill it out for us. It's all about having the right tools.
Anyways the problem now is that there is a bit of a leak (not from the plug itself), but from around the oil pan gasket. Looks like it might not have been firmly tightened. I will go back today and tighten it again just to make sure. But this sure beats spending $300 + labor on a new oil pan. We did it for the cost of the paint remover and the oil pan gasket. Which was a total of SIX DOLLARS.
1) Shamrock Tires was VERY helpful. The repair guy - John - spent about a good 20 minutes trying to remove the old plug. He finally sawed it off and then drilled through it.
2) O'rileys was kind enough to give us some tapping part (which we didn't end up using)
3) AAA Machine Shop retapped the drain
4) Advance Auto Parts gave us a new gasket for the drain plug (They also gave me a free plug several months ago)
All these shops are located in Wichita, Kansas. I can't believe there are so many nice people out there. We saved us a lot of money. I'm a broke student so I was very thankful to all these people helping us out.
I'm not that mechanically inclined, but the more I work on the car, the more confidence I am gaining. Even though this took us about 6 hours. I could probably do it again in 3 hours if I had to since now I know what to do.
THANK YOU Everyone for replying and helping me out. Your posts are greatly appreciated

Regards
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'99 Toyota Solare SE v6
'99 Toyota Solare SE v6
- msangapu
- Just Licensed SolaraGuy
- Posts: 18
- Joined: Wed Mar 05, 2003 4:30 pm
- Location: Kansas