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Message: [QUOTE="brucem, post: 1000438, member: 1556"] Looks much like the way a friends pan was leaking. We were smart and put dye in before pulling the trans. He was hoping for rear main seal, once the flywheel was off it was obvious it was the area on the bottom of that cover plate where it meets the pan. Funny thing is that he had his previous mechanic do the rotted out oil pan a few years back and his truck has leaked from the rear ever since. Anyhow now his engine is out on a stand as there were other issues with sticking valves and bent push rods. I just ordered him a new rear cover plate, since when I was cleaning up the original one I found it to have a number of gouges and possible manufacturing issues that could lead to leaks. I'm putting on the new Moroso extra thick oil pan and using thier silicone molded gasket, so I didn't want to take any chances of having leaks back there due to the previous mechanic gouging the sealing surface or a defect. With RTV it "should" be ok, but for $46 bucks I wasn't gonna take any chances. The Moroso pan is much thicker metal than a Ford OEM pan, and supposedly much better coated to prevent rotting away. Was about $80 more than buying a pan from Ford, and you gotta add the cost of the gasket too. Something else you can try, clean up the area really well with brake clean or something like that and then try pushing up on the lip of the pan there with a board or something. if you see oil or any liquid squeeze out, its a good chance that is your leak point. On the front of my friends truck you could se oil bubble out of the pan/timing cover interface where the RTV had never bonded. When I pulled the pan off, it came off without me even fighting with it, just lifted right off, and 100% of the RTV came with it. None had stuck to the block, so his previous mechanic didn't prep the surface in the least. Done a number of oil pans on cars and the ones that used RTV for a seal ALWAYS needed to be pried off, this pan prolly would have fallen off in my hands given the chance. [/QUOTE]