OIL PAN REMOVAL

I NEED TO ADD: IN OUR MOST RECENT MAGAZINE #109; JACKS' ARTICLE MENTIONED THAT THE DIPSTICK LENGTH IS AN EXACT 32.0 INCHES. SO I WENT OUT AND MEASURED MY STICK AND IT WAS EXACTLY 38.5 INCHES. I BELIEVE IT IS CORRECT BECAUSE WHEN I DID AN OIL CHANGE RECENTLY THE OIL FILTER AND PAN BOTH TOOK A TOTAL OF 5 QUARTS OF OIL. COULD IT BE THAT THE DIPSTICK TUBE WAS CUT THIS MUCH LONGER IN LENGTH?? REGARDS, MARLIN.

Marlin,
How many quarts does your pan hold. If is is supposed to be 7 quart, as mine is, and your dipstick if considerably longer as Jack mentioned you will show a full reading at 5 quarts, when in actuality you are running two quarts less than capacity.

Yes, but its a LOT of work. There is a welded crossmember just below the pan, and a welded e-brake bellcrank mount in front of the pan, right where you need to pull the unit out. Disconnect the exhaust at the headers, remove the distributor cap, unbolt the motormounts and tranny mounts (2ea), remove the engine screen & aircleaner, unfasten the e-brake cables from their bellcrank, and you're ready to start. Unbolt the pan and lower it as far as you can (a couple of inches), then jack up the engine a few inches. More than that and a bunch of wires and water hoses etc must also be unfastened. You may need to remove the firewall padding and access door so as to be able to rotate the crank to index the counterweights as the pan passes them. You won't have enough control by 'bumping' the starter and could destroy the pan. Getting the shallow part past the oil pump is the worst part. Once the thing is out, I advise cutting the old crossmember out and either making it removeable or buying one of the vendor's replacements. The factory made these removeable in '75 when Ford got out of the project. The e-brake bracket also can be made removeable by cutting it free and adding an angle-iron bracket to the frame. Getting your new 10-qt pan back in with its new baffles around the pump & pickup will be flat impossible without a removeable crossmember, unless you lift the engine & trans about a foot up. You'll have so much stuff unboltd, you might as well pull the powertrain IMHO.
As for the dipstick length, there was a typo in the PI article: The factory Tech Service Bulletins (which all owners should have), Bulletin 5, Article 34 says it should be exactly 38" from stop to tip. Sorry for the confusion.

THANK-YOU GENTLEMEN VERY MUCH FOR GETTING BACK TO ME SO SOON. YOUR VERY RIGHT JACK, IF I'AM GOING THAT FAR; I MIGHT AS WELL PULL THE WHOLE ENGINE AND TRANY OUT. I COULD WAIT UNTIL MY FIRST ENGINE REBUILD. I'AM ALSO THINKING I COULD SAW THE CROSSMEMBER BEFORE I PULL THE PAN, AND THEN MAKE A NEW ONE IN STAINLESS STEEL(I OWN A MACHINE SHOP); AND THEN INSTALL IT USING STEEL NUTSERTS INTO THE CHASSIS CHANNEL. OR WELD IN STUDS OR NUTS. I'LL HAVE TO TAKE A MUCH CLOSER LOOK, WHEN I LAST CHANGED THE OIL FILTER, I THINK I NOTICED TWO BOLTS AT EACH END OF THE CROSS MEMBER. I WOULD FEEL LUCKY IF IT TURNED OUT TO BE REMOVABLE (IT'S A 74L). THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR HELP!! SINCERELY, MARLIN.

OH YEH! SINCE MY DIPSTCK IS 38.5 INCHES LONG, 1/2 INCH TOO LONG TO THE "STOP"; I WILL FILL THE OIL UP UNTIL THE LEVEL IS 1/2 INCH ABOVE THE "FULL" LINE. THANKS FOR THE INFO, ALL MY BEST, MARLIN.

My dipstick is 38 3/4 with an extra line added above the full mark. 10 quarts fills it right up to the filed line

Regarding the oil level, Just drained and repalced my filter and full was only 4 lts
Aprox a gallon. What is the correct amount for the clevland.
My car is THPNM L 04355 which makes it a '72
cheers and thanks
cj

To MJ- the two nuts at the ends of the crossmember are the front lower a-arm attach clevises. After cutting out the crossmember AND its side-tabs spo the rail is flat, what I did was to weld caps onto a piece of 2-1/2" aluminum water pipe of the right length for my car. Cut 1/2" slots in the end caps about 2/3 of the way up so that when the a-arm nuts are slacked off, the crossmember can be slid up behind them, then rotated so the slots point downward. To tighten the nuts down, the bottom of the pipe must also be relieved for open-end-wrench clearance. As most of the loads on the crossmember are in compression, using the a-arm nuts to retain it seems to work just fine (mine was done 11 yrs ago).
To CJ- the std oil amount for passenger car 351-Cs was 5 qts plus one in the filter. For Boss 351-Cs with the same pan, Ford advises 6 qts plus one in the filter (they began losing lots of performance motors under warranty to rod bearings, so the oil volume was officially increased). Note that there are three different stock pans possible for your engine, all identical from the outside. The variations were in the pan baffles included. None are as good as some aftermarket pans from the vendors.

JACK, YOUR DESIGN IS VERY CLEAVER AND FUNCTIONAL TO STAND THE TEST OF TIME. THANKS MUCH, MARLIN.