I decided to replace my trashed Moroso oil pan with a Mancini (Charlies) brand 8 qt oil pan. Initially it looked like a really nice piece, all aluminum and much more shallow than the old one. I tried fitting it and ran into my first obstacle, most of the bolt holes were not centered and had to be opened up with a dremel. Ok, that sucks especially for a $300 oil pan but oh well. Then I tried fitting it up with a gasket, not even close. I used 3 completely different gasket sets ( one piece SCE, Felpro, ROL) and none worked. All of them have the same main problem, the front seal lip doesn't fit at all. The seal sits up too high, seems too thick to work with the pan, and the pan lip itself is too wide. I ended up trimming the parts that overhang on the pan to even attempt install and it still didn't work.
I had this same problem with the Moroso, on top of it being horribly warped from pan rail to pan rail. I ended up using sealer all the way around which was a mess to clean up later and ended up leaking anyways. I didn't have time to do anything else since I wanted the car running. I actually exchanged the Moroso for another one, and it too did not fit for anything. I had to destroy the pan to separate it to reseal it which is why I bought this one hoping it would be better. So much for that. There has to be a gasket or aftermarket pan that doesn't require the nightmare of using and cleaning up messy RTV everytime it has to come off. Is anyone else having these problems with the aftermarket small block pans?
This is a 360 small block BTW, and the rear seal part seems fine so it isn't a 340 pan that I got. I will try to call Mancini this week to see what they have to say if I can fit it in my schedule. I've done numerous oil pan gaskets on older vehicles with the 3 piece setup, so I know I'm doing it all right. Any advice or experience with this would be very appreciated, this is very frustrating!
