jondoe28

I have an 03 impala ls. I bought it about a year ago. It was a lease car that came out of michigan, the
rust belt. Everytime i chang oil, i always become kind of concerned about the oil pan. It is very rusty, and
when you push on the bottom, it feels kind of spongy. Almost like if i pushed really hard with my finger, i
could punch a hole through it. Has anyone else had this problem? I imagine the right thing to do would be
to change the oil pan. I live in south dakota, and we don't use salt on our roads, so i'm not used to rust.

48fan

Really? I lived in Rapid City for 3 years and they salted the heck out of the roads there. I had a little Mazda and I had to replace the whole exhaust system from the CAT back because it was rusted all the way through ina few places.

A new Oil pan will run you about $70-$80 and the gaskets about $13-$17.

I would do it soon too. If you hit a rock or run over something and it punches a hole in your pan...that's bad news. Not only that but IF somehow the rust was getting into your oil, you could have all kinds of scoring wear on the rod journals, crankshaft bearings, well pretty much everything that is lubed will have rust suspended in the oil which will cause scoring and wear.

Chev007

Yeah, better not to take that rust for granted because when I encountered same rusty pan problem in my Mazda and taken it all for granted... It really made some major worn out problems in my Mazda car parts where the oil runs through... I ended up buying and replacing more parts other than the oil pand and the gasket that cost me some bucks... My suggestion is to replace the pan immediately... Good luck!!!