Cliff Notes.. Always remove the oil dip stick before replacing the oil pan.

I picked up a 1995 Nissan Quest Minivan as a "random act of kindness". A friend of mine from church and I decided we should help out a local minister who works with kids full time and has been struggling to maintain on his crummy stipends... So we put up some funds, and I looked around for a while for reasonable priced van.

I found a Quest that was in nice shape, but had some paint imperfections. I snagged it for a really nice price... or at least I thought.

I asked about the oil stain on the driveway and was told that was from another vehicle. When I got it home I left it there for an hour and came back to find a large puddle of oil. Uh-oh!!

So I jack up the front of the van and find that the oil pan has a huge dent in it and is leaking like a screen door in a rainstorm.

Now I've swapped oil pans before. Normally it's an easy process. Normally the manufacturer makes a two part oil pan or at least a seperate sump that can be detached and replaced without a great deal of work. Not the VG30de... no sir.. That sucker is one piece.. the whole bottom of the motor.

So I snagged a replacement oil pan and scheduled some time at my friends house to use his lift.

What a pain in the neck this job was. First you have to remove the exhaust piping from the header around the motor and underneath. Then you have to support the motor itself with a jack from below or a lift from above. The reason you have to support the whole motor is that the crossmember has to be removed in order to get the oil pan off.

So after busting my knuckles underneath an otherwise very nice van... I finally managed to remove the oil pan and bolt the new one on.

I put the pan on, put the transmission mount plates back on, put the engine mounts back on, put the crossmember back in, put the exhaust piping back on, filled it with oil, and dropped it from the lift.

I fired it up... and heard a terrible engine sound... The sound of the dipstick hitting the rotating assembly as it spun. Yikes!!!

So I shut the thing down and tried to figure out what I'd done wrong....

Well, I forgot to remove the dipstick prior to putting on the new oil pan. The dipstick has a little bracket guide welded to the side of the oil pan to keep it in a proper position. I installed the new pan and didn't get the dipstick back into the guide channel.. so it was pinched against the outside of the channel and pointing straight at the internals of the bottom end. Stupid Stupid Stupid!!!!

So I had to do the whole job over again.

VG30E

Ah yes.. Good Catch.

Silly single overhead cam motor.

Eikon wrote:Silly single overhead cam motor.

Hey now... the VG30E is an awesome engine.

mtcookson wrote:
Hey now... the VG30E is an awesome engine.

Actually, it is an awesome engine. This particular motor that I was working on had 120,000 miles on it, but ran incredibly well. It was still powerful, but most impressive was how quiet and smooth it was. You could barely hear it at idle sitting at a stoplight.

Very nice van!!!

So, Seth - About that oil pan project I was gonna have you help me with....

I'm gonna have to, um, reschedule. Yeah.

Don't call me, I'll call you.

AZhitman wrote:So, Seth - About that oil pan project I was gonna have you help me with....

I'm gonna have to, um, reschedule. Yeah.

Don't call me, I'll call you.

LOL.. At least here on NICO we have some staff that isn't afraid to turn a wrench and actually has some hands on knowledge about the motors and rest of the vehicle.

Seth,

Did you ever get a chance to slap a supercharger on that 3.3 Quest?

I'm thinking about twincharging one someday.

Turbocharger feeding the supercharger... Nice big front mount intercooler hanging inside the front bumper. I wonder what a set of Mickey Thompson slicks would look like on the front of a minivan???

Wait a second, is this a minivan forum? We better brush up on our rear entertainment dvd screen options.

Bleh, just keep it turbo. Roots S/C's are too inefficient.

Eikon wrote:
Actually, it is an awesome engine. This particular motor that I was working on had 120,000 miles on it, but ran incredibly well. It was still powerful, but most impressive was how quiet and smooth it was. You could barely hear it at idle sitting at a stoplight.

Very nice van!!!

Keep up regular maintenance and the VG can do an easy 200,000 miles... actually, I bet it could do an easy 300,000 really.

How critical is the timing belt swap? I've seen the RB's click over 245K with not change. I just don't want to buy a Quest and have to pull the motor right off...FWD suck for maintenance. This is on the VG30E BTW...only good motor in the Quest aside from the newer VQ.

WD

On the Quest you could go till it breaks as Ford had Nissan make the van VG's non-interference. If it gets too worn though it could decrease performance due to changed valve timing and could just eventually break leaving you stranded on the side of the road. There's actually a chance also that the Quest VG30 has a longer life, round tooth belt, but I can't remember off hand.

I'd also consider the VG33 equipped Quest. You get the same great VG with a little more displacement and a little more potential as far as modification goes as they can handle a huge overbore (up to nearly 3.8 liters). The VG33 has the round tooth timing belts which I believe are good for either 100k or 120k miles if I remember correctly. I'm not sure if the 3.3 retained the non-interference design, I'll have to check the cam specs to know for sure.

Yeah, the round-tooth belts have a much longer lifespan. Early ones were good for 90k but the later ones are 120k I believe. That's much better than the square-tooth's 60k. Although I went probably 90k on my third belt in the Max (which was a 60k belt).