Oil change question

My car has a CB 2000cc engine with the added thin sump and external oil cooler and spin-off filter. I changed the oil this weekend and had a couple of questions:
1. I didn't see a drain plug anywhere on the engine. Taking off the oil screen plate produced a big gusher of oil. Is it better to loosen up the spin off filter first, then remove the lower plate after draining at the filter?
2. The oil screen plate uses a paper gasket, and there was a drip or two on it after driving a couple of hours. Has anyone tried using a different gasket material? I found a roll of material called "cork-rubber" at a local auto parts store. It's 1/16 inch thick and one of the stated applications is for oil pan gaskets. The cork-rubber material seems softer and more compressible than the paper gasket. It would be easy to trace out the paper gasket and replicate the pattern on cork. Has anyone tried it?

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.
PS: GO SAINTS!

Felix---I always put a thin smear of grease on both sides of the gasket before tightening it down and never have a leak. Tighten the nuts holding the drain on to no more than 8 ft pounds or they will strip. Re tighten after a test drive.

Felix,
If you have a CB Thin line sump with with the eight-stud sump plate, contact Mainley by Design: http://www.mainelycustombydesign.com/index.html He can set you up with a sump plate that has a drain plug in it. Makes the oil-change much simpler.
If you're running a decent external oil filter you can get rid of the in-engine screen.

what terry says 2x....those pesky studs and nuts are prone to be overtighteng and strip the studs out of the aluminum.

But if you have the thinline with the filter in the sump, you need to clean it anyway. So IMHO, it still needs to come off. Remove all the bolts save 2, then loosen them until you get a decent flow into the pan. Then let it drain for a while. No problem.

Thanks for all the helpful responses. Terry and Bob - The sump plates on the linked website look like very high quality pieces. Do you know if they will accept the screen off the plate I have now? The one I have now is shown here ( http://www.cbperformance.com/catalog.asp?ProductID=1656 ) and the screen part can certainly be unscrewed. Just not sure if it can be transferred to the machined plate with drain plug. BTW, I have an external Fram HP1 racing filter (in addition to the internal screen)on my engine. Danny - I hear what you're saying about having to take off the plate, but a drain plug would sure be a lot nicer.

Felix,
They come with a screen, which I removed. They are high quality and they're not cheap, around $80.00 if I remember correctly.
Regarding oil filters, Fram ain't what it used to be. I use a quality filter and go without the screen. Here are a few choices:

Motorcraft (Ford) FL-1HP
Wix 51515R
Napa 1515R (made by Wix)
"R" is for racing...;)

Thanks, Terry.

Just a thought on the Mainley sump cover. I installed one on my car with the thin line CB sump. It is excellent quality and will make oil changes much more enjoyable. But the lowest point on your IM is now the drain plug! I am now even more cautious when approaching any potential bottoming situation.

hey Felix how many liters of oil does your engine require?

roland took my CB plate and had it machined for a drain plug, instead of a drain nut it is a plug that has a indented hex so it is almost flush.

Felix---if you have an external oil filter (I believe you said you did) maybe you don't need the screen that is part of the C. B. Performance thin line sump---maybe you have it just for the extra oil capacity.

Anyway I will attach the directions I re-wrote that should have come with the Thin Line sump --these directions have some tips that make what was for me a PITA service but with doing this way it became very simple.

The 8 acorn nuts are to be tightened only at 8 foot pounds and I found a small torque wrench that reads this low as I am paranoid about stripping out these nuts.

I really liked my thin line sump and although many say it just ain't so, I saw a reduction in my oil temps from using it---the wind going over and under the sump must have done something to cool the oil. For me it made my oil lower by 10-15 degrees at least.

Good luck!

Will - thanks for the warning. I hadn't even considered that!
Burak - my engine took 5 quarts to reach the full mark after a brief warm up.
Bob - Sounds like a great idea.
Jack - That torque wrench looks like a great idea. My engine came with the sump so I can't comment on whether it lowered the oil temps, but my car doeas run very cool. Wt the hottest part of the summer down here, it's never gone past the half way mark in the green, and usually runs much cooler than that (just into the green when moving forward).

Felix---I found my VS in LA---in Monroe, LA. Had just 600 miles on it
---another person who couldn't figure out how to sort out a Speedster.


Damned shame though that a brand new car still needs any sorting but it is what it are.

doncha need two paper gaskets on the filter screen? one above and one below the screen with just a bit of RTV to hold 'em in place?

Felix, Just a few words of caution. You need to calibrate your temp. gauge so you know what "half way translates to"

For all you know, 1/2 way up the gauge could be 250 or 140?????

They are notoriously unreliable and since they don't have any numbers, they mean nothing.

William, be very wary of RTV (that's silicone, right?). I've had experience where gasoline disolves it and sucks it into the gas lines, where it proceeds to plug up ALL filters (better them than the carbs!).

In my case I used it to seal up a gas tank on a boat. It stopped the boat. Twice. Luckily all filters were easily accessible. What comes out looks and feels like a slimey silicone worm. Cleaned filters twice before the system finally cleared. Nice to have clear glass see-through filters under those conditions!

William - If you look at the picture linked in my 2nd post, you can see that the oil plate for the CB thin sump has the oil screen mounted on a separate plate that is bolted into a recessed area in the center of the main plate. There is no gasket under the central plate.
Larry - I'm with you; I hate gauges that aren't calibrated in absolute engineering units. But I think my gauge is probably an okay indcator of relative engine heat because my external oil cooler is equipped with a thremostatically controlled fan, and the fan doesn't come on until the temperature gauge climbs a fair bit into the green zone.

After looking at these easily-stripped studs in the aluminum oil sump, I wonder why they aren

Felex--Mainley also offers an oil dipstick with a amall temp gauge
mounted on it. That's how I knew my temps ran cooler with the Thin Line Sump---plus, like Larrry said, you can calibrate your oil temp gauge.

Bon chance

Jack - I ordered the Mainley sump with magnetic drain plug and the dipstick w/ temperature gauge. Thanks for the advice.

Felix---you done good. I found my car in Monroe, LA ---not too far from you. We should caravan to Carlisle this year.

Jack - If I can make it this year I will. Not sure about driving the roadster though. That would be one heck of a long ride in any car, let alone one of these little tubs. One way - maybe. Round trip - not so much! I'd love to see and hear your car though. I'm intrigued by the T4, and might go that route with the next engine.

Felix, come by air if you must. It's most definitely worth the trip.

Felix, the Mainley comes with studs and nuts to "through bolt" it to the thinline sump. You will be impressed, and the temp gauge is a nice confidence builder on a hot day. Just dont forget that that drain plug is really low! Good luck!

Lane - I plan to attend Carlisle this year if my schedule permits. I went in 2008 and that was enough to convince me to buy a Roadster.

Will - Thanks for the tips about the Mainley sump plate. Because of your feedback, I'm also getting an allen-head ("inny") drain plug in addition to the regular hex head plug ("outy"). The allen head plug does not have the magnet, so I'll look at it and determine if there is a way to afix a magnet to it. If not, I may just use the hex head plug and see if it scrapes on the ground after a few hundred miles. The studs pictured on the Mainley website look like normal studs. In my post above, I was wondering if anyone had tried using a bolt instead of a stud. If the bolt is screwed down through the stud hole, such that the head of the bolt is inside the case and the threaded ends sticking out where the studs would normally be, then it seems you could use more torque when bolting the plate onto the ends of the protruding bolts. The heads would prevent accidental stripping of the threads out of the aluminum case.

thats exactally how my extended sump is installed. bill

Just put a cow magnet on your external oil filter. For two bucks problem solved.

The potential cow recipient will thank you, too...

How much does an oil/filer change cost? I usually do my one but one of those lube places opened up here last month. A friend had his oil/filter changed in a 10 year old Pontiac 4 cyl and it was $189 plus tax. I thought those places were cheaper than that?

Brian, $189 is just about right as long as they threw in a brake job and complete detailing.

I see oil changes advertised all over my local area. Includes 5 quarts of oil plus a filter for as low as $25.00

There's a truck stop not far from here that advertises oil changes to include 24 quarts of oil plus a filter for $179.00

I hope your friend got at least 2 bottles of KY for that price

Yes, ridiculous. Wonder how long this place will last at those rates. He must have had something else done because I hear that their base rate for filter and 4-5 quarts of oil is $129 plus tax. Still too much IMO.

At $60 an hour, after 44% taxes I'd have to work just over 4 hours to pay for a job that takes 15-20 minutes. Doesn't make sense to me.

You can buy 5 quarts of oil and a filter hereabouts for $15.00 (after a mail in rebate). After that, it's just a few minutes of quality time with your speedy's underside.

Got the Mainely parts in today and they are very high-quality components. See the picture below showing the oil plate with the allen head drain plug (sorry for fuzzy cellphone picture). The allen head plug doesn't protrude much lower than the plate itself or the nuts that hold it on. One question though: The plate came with nylock nuts and regular zinc-plated washers (not copper). What's the importance of using copper for these washers?

None... Copper, zinc, really doesn't make a difference. I've installed several of these plates and I always use "3 bond" to seal it to the sump. If you can't find "3 bond" then use RTV silicone

FYI Felix.....The copper washers were used as gaskets between the nuts and the sump plate...They were usually made from "dead soft" copper...(pure)... and compress fairly easily.
This practice was common through the late '50s.....

Thanks for the replys. Larry - I assume you eliminate the screen before sealing up the plate? I had planned on leaving the screen in place, but only removing the plate to clean it every 3rd or 4th oil change, only draining via the plug at the intermediate oil changes.

I'm not a big fan of the oil screen