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This seems a dumb question but how do drop the oil pan on my 23rd series eight with the 288? The pan is so long! What needs to be removed to do it? I have a car that sat for awhile. I am sure I have lots of gunk in the bottom of the pan.

Thank You.

It's been a very long time but as I recall, just disconnect the steering idler arm from the passenger side frame rail, it will drop out of the way and provide sufficient clearance to remove the pan. After all the pan bolts are removed, you may have to rotate the engine a bit as in certain positions the crankshaft counterweights may interfere.

If the front motor mount has deteriorated and sagged I believe some have also needed to figure out some kind of rigging to raise the engine slightly. In addition to dropping and clearing the counterweights the pan still needs to have enough room above the crossmember to slide out.

Since placing a jack under the pan to raise the engine as is done to access the bottom bolts when removing the waterpump on an engine with sagging mounts is not possible, some have used a hoist to raise the engine and others have managed to place a block of wood between the jack and engine at some strategic spot. Just be sure whatever you rig will not get dislodged when manipulating the crank and pan.

I have a few youtube videos where I'm removing my oil pan on my 47, maybe they will help.
youtube.com/watch?v=8uyrBl3oq0I&t=2s
Wes

2nd part
youtube.com/watch?v=vk_x2yp7F2k

Thank you. I saw complexities in removing and, instead of diving on, I thought I would ask. I mean, removing an oil pan is easy. But it is the getting to it!

What happens if you go through all that, take it off, and pan's clean?

How much gunk depends on a few things.
Does your car have a partial or no oil filter?
If there's no filter and high mileage, sitting with contaminated oil, than it's probably even worse than you think.
I wouldn't worry about it right now, if it has a filter and you just want to get running. Flush it out with fresh (ND) oil/change filter.
Depending on what you are going to do with it, if you're just trying to start, etc. you might consider alternates.
You can drain the pan and inspect first through drain hole with a fiber optic inspection camera and down thru the oil fill pipe. These are fairly inexpensive now at the Chinese tool take outs.
If it had no filter, high mileage, and you see lumps when you drain the oil, then it's probably sludged. Some of the early oil had a load of paraffins and they crap out everywhere, unfortunately, not just in the pan.
I took a lot of grief from this forum, but I filled my pan up with kerosene and let it sit overnight. I kept draining and flushing till it was clear, no solids. You want to do this cold and static and before you turn the motor by hand. Then fill back up with 2-3 qts of oil and drain once more to get the kerosene residual out. All the big stuff should be gone. You can reinspect at this point too. The galleys may still need attention, but you won't clean those with the pan off either. If one or more is plugged, you'll hear a tapping rather quickly after it starts, and shut it down.
I wouldn't run detergent oil for the first time or two. Depends on how much stuff you get in the oil after cleaning and whether or not it runs. I'd change oil after a few hours running til it's looking good and clean. Then you can use a modern oil, if you want. I'll probably get grief again for even mentioning this, but I have my proof and reasoning.
Simply burn the contaminated kerosene or dispose per local rules.

That was what I was thinking of doing was using kerosene in the oil pan and let it sit for a awhile, maybe rock the car side to side a few times even.

Not sure if it was mentioned but it is sometimes necessary to crank the engine slightly by hand to get the front rods out of the way should they happen to be in the down position.

PackardDon, Yes Owen did point that out, but never hurts to mention again. As far as dropping the pan and finding it clean, just one less thing to worry about. I would guess with the small cameras one can buy today, one could just stick a camera down there and have a look see. Also with these old cars it was part on the maintenance to drop the oil pan since before the 50's we only had detergent free oil and the theory was that all the dirt and heavy stuff would fall to the the bottom. with the floating oil pickup would only pickup the clean oil from the top lay of oil.

With detergent oil it would surround the dirt and transport it to the filter where it would all be collected, maybe a lot more to it but this is just how I see it.
Wes

Strongly recommend removing the oil pan. It is one of the easier and more straight forward jobs on this engine. Removing the pan will give you a good picture of what is going on inside the engine. The oil pump pickup screen is an important part to lubrication. Take the pan off, thoroughly clean it and the screen. Then no worries. Why mess around?