picked up this gem for 400 bucks
1984 carbed 2.8 auto
its knocking only when its warm and not at idle,
my question is how do you dropp the oil pan on this motor? its a sweet running little v6 and doesnt even smoke so i want to try and save it the best way i can but i cant pull the motor i have no shop to work on it in and no cherry picker i really like 2.8s i had one in an s10 5 speed good on gas. so can i pull the oil pan? it looks like the crossmember is in the way but i could be wrong cause im no expert, thought i would ask some people who are more experienced with somthing like this

 

You can pull the oil pan, but you will have to either jack the engine up about 4 inches, or let the entire front suspension down about the same amount. I had to change the oil pan on mine once, and we lowered the front suspension down. There are about 8 long bolts that hold it in place. Of course, we were using a lift. It would be a big pain to do that without one. I would recommend pulling the motor up about 4 inches.

 

thats just bout what i was thinking just undo those motor mounts and jack it up a bit thanks for the advice : )

 

Youre sure its an engine knock and not something like detonation? Does it only do it when youre accelerating or under some sort of a load? if you slowly raise the RPMs while its in park, does the knock still present itself? Just a thought before you tear it down.

I also had to pull my pan before, when youre jacking the engine up, be careful to not smash the distributor against the firewall, i was able to get mine up high enough without pulling the dizzy.

 

if the motor needs any work like bearings or the crank redone, i.e any repairs that will cost u more then 150-200 bucks dont fix what u have

get urself a junkyard 3.4 or 3.1/2.8 that is fuel injected then swap ur carb stuff onto it

the carbed motors have different sized crank journals and are known to be weak,and also the carbed heads have small valves and flow less then the fuel injected heads of the later motors, so an early carbed motor is not worth repairing if the bill is going to be 150+ bucks