Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

Due to other projects being very busy, couldn’t spend much time on my NSX but now back in the garage again.

Oil Pan removed and if you have the replacement o-ring, you can also remove the oil screen/strainer to completely take off the baffle plate.

I didn’t have one so just shifted the baffle to take a quick glance on the bearing cap, back of the piston, conn. rod, etc.

Checked them a while ago when we replaced the oil pump and as expected, nothing unusual found.
Couldn’t take good photo as the oil kept dripping but everything looked very clean including the back of the piston. Very happy

Thoroughly washed the Oil Pan inside out and degreased the top section in order to apply liquid gasket.
The mating surface at the engine block was also degreased as much as possible.

Applied liquid gasket around the edge of oil pump and the left side cover.
Also, I prefer using liquid gasket on both side of the pan rubber gasket.

As always, while dealing with the liquid gasket, no time to take photo so the Oil Pan is back in place with the new gasket.

It will start to seep the oil again in the future but hope it will stay clean for some time.


My master didn’t like the idea of keep using the OEM rubber gasket so he designed the metal one.

Probably next time, I’ll use it to minimise the chance of oil seepage.


By the way, personally, I won't follow the specified torque figure of 14Nm for tightening the Oil pan bolts and nuts.
To me, this is far too tight and possibly one of the reason why so many NSX seeping the oil from the Oil Pan area.

It will not only squash the rubber gasket too much but also deform the Oil Pan mating surface resulting in even worse condition for sealing the oil.


Once the liquid gasket is cured, installed the new oil filter with the engine oil filled and added the remaining fresh engine oil from the 5L container.

As I removed the old engine oil as much as possible from the cyl head area, probably I need to add a little bit more later.

I have been using Mobil 1 for almost all of my engine life and after looking at the state of my engine with more than 131K miles, I’ll just keep using it.

Front header is now back in place.

The fixing bolts and nuts on the heat shield at the front CAT were completely corroded and started to rattle so removed the half of the shield.

I’ll just keep it off or drill out the remaining bolts and re-install it later.

Time to follow the specific tightening sequence for all four Eng/Trans mountings including the sub frame bolts.
This is the Rear mount which is the very last one to be torqued.

Finally, managed to carry out the vacuum leak check on the cooling system.

One of the down side of working on the engine while it is out of the chassis is that you can’t perform the cooling system check until the engine is back in place.

Therefore, you need to be 100% sure that the WP was installed properly on the engine.

No leakage for 1Hr so happy with the result.


Will vacuum fill the system tomorrow as it’s too cold…..

More to follow later.

Kaz