Chevy Duramax Oil Pan Shockingly Collects Contaminated Fluids
During development for a new Chevy Duramax oil pan, Banks Power made a shocking discovery regarding the OEM unit.
Changing oil is one of those mundane tasks that everyone knows they have to complete on a pre-determined schedule, whether that be 3,000 miles like the old days or longer – up to 10,000 miles or even on an annual basis with some newer models. However, it’s also easy to forget that every time we change the oil, there are some things left behind, which could include various debris inside the old oil that’s still in the engine somewhere. If this gunk settles in the bottom of an oil pan and simply recirculates through the engine time and time again, well, that could spell trouble, which is what makes this recent Chevy Duramax centered video from Banks Power so alarming.
Banks Power has been working on developing a new oil pan for the Duramax diesel, presenting owners with a variety of improvements over the stock piece, but during that process, it discovered something rather shocking – there was nearly one quart of old oil left in the OEM oil pan after it drained the engine, which was full of contaminants. As it turns out, GM didn’t design the Duramax’s pickup tube to retain oil for priming purposes, but instead, the fluid becomes trapped there for a different reason altogether.
That oil is “a byproduct of the use of a weld nut, used to allow for proper thread engagement on the drain plug to avoid stripping the threads, but, directed inwards as to not make the drain plug a low point on the pan. This results in a pool of oil at the bottom of the sump, and thus a pickup tube will retain additional contaminated oil,” according to out host. The weld nut sticks roughly an inch into the oil pan, allowing space for sediment and other gunk to build up with no place to go, and since it’s submerged, the oil can’t be displaced by air, either.
Trouble is, this means that even after one drains the oil out of a Duramax diesel and changes the filter, there’s still going to be some old oil left behind, and the debris present in that nearly one-quart of fluid will mix with the new oil and circulate through the engine. That much is on vivid display here when Banks installs a clear oil pan on their test vehicle so that we can see precisely what’s going on. Interestingly, this wasn’t the motivation behind the development of that company’s CoolRunner oil pan, but it did inspire Banks to make some improvements.
Those include making the drain plug a bit lower and providing two extra quarts of capacity, while the pickup tube isn’t submerged in oil like the stock unit. There are also fins present in the pan to help with both cooling and draining, to boot. Regardless, the most important takeaway here is that the OEM Duramax oil pan isn’t exactly the best designed unit out there, and those that own a truck equipped with one of these diesels may want to either change their oil more frequently, or perhaps consider upgrading their oil pan.
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