Oil Pan Leakage

[Clubby Clutch]

My MINI was at Baron getting the A/C recharged and I asked them to look at my oil pan as I had the car on a lift at work and noticed some oily buildup on the front side of the oil pan. Its near the top which would make me think gasket....

Eric from MINI calls me and says they want $455 to fix the gasket sealer? He told me they basically go in with RTV and seal it up.

Forgive me if I am wrong but wouldnt that mean the gasket is leaking? and isnt RTV about a few dollars at the store? I've even got some from doing a valve cover gasket on a friends car.

What confuses me is they don't want to remove the oil pan but can just apply the sealer to the exterior? I know they use sealer on the corners of the pan on the gasket but why keep the pan on the car. Sure yeah I'll give you a lot of money to do what seems to me like little work. I would be more than happy to replace the gasket myself and put the sealer on the sections that seem to have failed...


I forgot to add this link:
http://new.minimania.com/part/G2NME1061 ... -Cooper--S

If you scroll down the link, you'll notice they mention the gasket has been discontinued for sealant. How would Baron fix the problem then?

[Minidave]

I think you might have misunderstood them, they would pull the pan and put RTV on before they re-installed it.

That looks like an easy repair to me, something you could do yourself.

[Clubby Clutch]

Even Isaac told me they leave the oil pan on. I asked for more clarification but the said it doesn't come off. I might go ahead and replace the gasket and reseal the pan with rtv to be on the safe side myself at my next oil change.

[Minidave]

Weird way to fix something, did you try just tightening it slightly? I have a hard time believing it's the pan gasket.

[REDSLED]

They might have said to leave it for now as it might be considered a seep. But to fix the pan will have to be removed and all the old material scraped from the pan and the block and then reinstalled with a new sealer(basically rtv).