Thoughts on Oil Pan Sight Glass - Subaru Vanagon

[davevickery]

I have a Subaru 2.5 and it is pretty hard to get an accurate reading of the oil level. I had an outfront motorsports shortened pan on my first conversion and I have a Burley pan/mount on this one. Both are difficult to figure out the oil level.

You remove the stick and oil is kind of all over it. Depending which splash of oil you are looking at, it could be at the low or the high mark . If you pull it out and wipe it off and try again, it is even harder to tell. I only try getting a reading after it has been sitting, figuring that would be the most reliable method.

So I wonder if an oil sight glass wouldn't be an easy solution. Just drill a hole in the side of the pan at the fill line and install a sight glass.

Any thoughts or experience with this?

[alaskadan]

Yes! I posted about this a couple years ago and no one else seemed to have the same issue. I have the SC shortened pan and the reading is all over the place. One side of the dipstick reads higher than the other and repeating the procedure seems to lower the level on the stick, sometimes.

[vanis13]

Interesting idea!

Since my shortened oil pan has the drain in the back, I wonder if as a test one can do a clear tube out it it going up and see how high the level is.... Would have to go high enough and would have to have atmosphere open top...hmmm got me thinking!
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[?Waldo?]

Just a couple thoughts. I wonder how difficult it would be to gauge how much oil to add. Also, the side of the pan is the worst place to take an oil level reading. Even slightly out of level this way or that could show the difference between low and overful.

[davevickery]

[Ride_On]

I've got the Outfront shortened pan on our Bay conversion and agree... I've resorted to scuffing up the dipstick to see if that helps.

I just did a quick search to see if there was some kind of an oblong sight window that could be welded in, but not such luck, just external 'tower' or 'thermometer' looking attachments - a little too vulnerable down there for my liking. A quick connect or quick release would be pretty slick though!

Oh, and the sight window on the Subarugears transmission does work well.
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1977 Westfalia 2.0 FI Skills EJ25 w SubaruGears 5sp
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=687254
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[davevickery]

[reinheitsgebot]

FWIW, I had the same experience. One side read full and the other showed nothing. I believe the problem was how I was pulling the dipstick by reaching into the license plate door causing it to bend. I finally stopped being lazy and pulled the stick straight out of the hatch. After taking the bend out I found I was getting no reading at all. A couple of quarts brought the level to where it read full from both sides.
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'84 Westy
2WD 4 spd manual
Subaru 2.5 from NorthWesty
16" mercedes wheels with T3 hardware

[davevickery]

I get 10 different readings depending on how I do it. But the Burley pan is not a modfied stock pan. The dipstick comes straight out the license plate hole but bends as it goes down into the pan. And when it is sitting in the oil it is at a pretty extreme angle. SC came up with a different type of dipstick, maybe there is a simple fix for this? File down the dipstick so it can't touch the sides of the tube in the reading area? Maybe a different kind of dipstick that is porous or something. A small sensor on the dipstick that tells if it is submerged in oil at a particular point. The eye glass seems like a simple fix if nothing else.

[alaskadan]

On my SC pan the dipstick is almost vertical and goes through a very subtle bend in the tube. I remove it from the engine hatch not the license plate door. So I don't think its getting swiped off in my case. I've considered sand blasting my dipstick because it all most acts like its coated in something that oil sheets off of. Any sight glass style would be hard to read for me because it would always be covered in road schmeg. And possibly behind the small car engine mount.

[davevickery]

[baltik]

Somewhat on topic - I know Vanagon engines are sensitive to overfilling oil, my understanding is that ej22/25 are not. So is everyone taking max capacity and setting it as their full mark?

[Jake de Villiers]

FWIW I have the same trouble reading my wife's Subaru's dipstick - the oil does the same weird V-shaped thing on the stick as does the 2000 EJ25 in my van.

I'm going to try sanding some texture on the relevant portion of the dipstick.
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[Jake de Villiers]