Reply to "Engine out"

Thanks.
Garth, I like your plan, but as Julian says, at the moment it's too ambitious for me (I want to do that kind of thing 1½-2 years from now, when my Longchamp is 100% ready, yes I work slowly :-)). Doug, maybe it's leaking because of vibration, but my first guess would be that it becomes hard or whatever from years of not being used?

Frankly I would prefer to fix this with the engine in the car, by removing the oil pan. But I'm told it's not possible because it's an early model where crossmember is welded.

Has anybody tried it though? If rear of gearbox and exhaust is released and gearbox/engine is tilted forward/upward, might there be enough room to remove oil pan? If yes, can I just remove rear bearing cap and replace seal? Just to avoid more oil spill until the big restoration later. Again, since the engine and gearbox is otherwise perfect, I'm only doing this to protect my clutch (fyi, earlier my clutch was shuddering when moving from stand still. I then took a screwdriver and bent open the lower shield so the excess oil could drip out freely. That seems to have at least lowered the oil contamination, because the shuddering is gone, clutch is perfect now)