1997 Savana, engine temp, fan clutch, trouble codes etc

The vans have a good amount of room between the pan and crossmember even with the 5qt pan. Enough room that the pan drops out fairly easily.

HotWheelsBurban said:

Most Chevy small blocks use 5 quarts of oil for a complete fill. The filters back in the earlier years would hold almost a quart. What I do on my 5.7s, which I use the AC PF1218 filter on, is fill the filter with fresh oil. Most of the time this is about 3/4 of a quart. Both my trucks have the towing package with external oil cooler; that increases the capacity a little bit. So I have a 5 quart jug of oil, that goes in the fill hole once the new filter is installed. I give it a few minutes for the oil to get into the crankcase, and then start the engine and run it a couple of minutes. The oil pressure should come up almost immediately. Then I shut the engine off, wait a minute for the oil to drain back into the crankcase, and check the stick. Usually after a day of driving, that last little bit of oil in the quart bottle, will be needed to top it off.
This is my experience with Chevy 350 Vortecs; the TBI and carbureted engines are pretty similar except for the filter I used(PF35 or PF932 depending on clearance).

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The PF932 2qt C60 truck filter works well on these vans provided they do not have the engine oil cooler adapter. The long filter uses 2x the filter media and will not open the bypass as long on a cold start, which filters the oil better by allowing less unfiltered oil to circulate.

L31MaxExpress said:

The shape of the pan itself and where the drain plug is. The 5qt pan uses a longer windage tray as well that goes forward one more main cap. 2 additional studs and nuts to hold it into place.



4qt pan

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5qt pan

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This is what the Milodon tray I use looks like. Takes a small amount of grinding to clearence the tray for the M99HVS pump. This is what it looks like when it is finished and the pan is ready to go on.

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All our 350s must be the 4 quart pan then. I've never seen one with the drain plug on the bottom like that; all the ones we had, I changed oil multiple times and I remember it's on the left side edge.
Do you happen to know if the deeper 5 quart pan will fit the 400 pickup/Burb chassis/frame clearance? If it would, that seems like an easy insurance policy for the engine.

HotWheelsBurban said:

All our 350s must be the 4 quart pan then. I've never seen one with the drain plug on the bottom like that; all the ones we had, I changed oil multiple times and I remember it's on the left side edge.
Do you happen to know if the deeper 5 quart pan will fit the 400 pickup/Burb chassis/frame clearance? If it would, that seems like an easy insurance policy for the engine.

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The 305 in my 99 Tahoe had one on it. Pan was straight off the 2500 van the 305 originally came out of.

So if I wanted to upgrade to the larger 5 quart pan, would I need to replace anything else beside the actual pan or is it just bolt on with no additional mods? Looking at Rockauto, there are 4 or 5 different brands...any thoughts on which one to choose, regardless of pan size?

Thanks again!

Hello again! A little update: Oil pan is down. It was actually a quite easy job, I only had to remove the converter cover and loosen the bolts. It did slide right out just as L31MaxExpress said. However, when I took a little deeper look in it I noticed that there was a layer of milky sludge at the very bottom of the pan (the deepest part) and almost below the drain plug level. I know that this is a sign of water in the oil so I guess I need some advice...here is a little "backstory"...

The van has been mostly att standstill since october last year aside from a few shorter runs, when draining the oil I saw no signs of water or other strange colors, everything looked fine inside the crankcase as far as I could see actually a lot cleaner than I had anticipated, the PCV hoses/rubber fittings were very dry and one of them severly cracked (replaced them yesterday), I haven´t noticed any coolant disappearing nor have I seen any signs of oil/oil residue in the coolant tank or radiator. Aside from the troubles I mentioned earlier in the thread with CKP-sensor, the engine has been running fine....so I guess my question is: should I worry about this as in broken headgaskets or worse?

Any thoughts on this would be very much appreciated

Thanks in advance

Best regards

Does the engine get up to proper operating temperature? Don't have a failed thermostat...right?

Clean the pan, reinstall. Depending on humidity and temperature changes, "milky sludge" in the bottom of the oil pan, on a vehicle that's been parked for months and months and doesn't have coolant loss, doesn't worry me too much.

Pressurize the cooling system and let it sit a while. Failing/Failed Intake gaskets are more common than head gaskets. Intake gaskets cost us the stock 350 back in 2004 at 57K miles on my 97 van. It hydraulic locked on startup and broke a rod, broke the cam into 3 pieces, put a hole in the engine block, etc. Only the heads were able to be salvaged.

Thanks a lot for replying, I´m so glad to have found this forum!

The thermostat has been replaced and it seems to be reaching normal operating temperature as it should. Intake gaskets were replaced last year along with an upgraded injection spider etc. When doing this, I remember now that there were some milky residue in the lifter valley and inside the valve covers which i cleaned off. The old intake gaskets were just rubbish. Another thought, aside from condensation or similar, is that maybe they (the old intake gaskets) were leaking prior to the change and some of that leak has been sitting deep down in the oil pan, not being able to "boil off"....I don't know....I´ll put it back together with the new pan I bought and see what happens. I´ll swing by a friends workshop in a town nearby and see if he has a pressure tester I can borrow as well. In the words of Arnold: "I´ll be back!"

Thanks again!

Peavey said:

Another thought, aside from condensation or similar, is that maybe they (the old intake gaskets) were leaking prior to the change and some of that leak has been sitting deep down in the oil pan, not being able to "boil off"...

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Bingo. Get it up to temp and run it. Keep an eye out for coolant loss. A little milky condensate wouldn't worry me. A pan full of milkshake would.