I happened to be taking off the oil pan of 2001 RX. The manual asks for a specialty tool, but Autozone had a thin sharp hardened steel tool for $5 that worked perfectly along with some gentle hammering. The old gasket was a little tedious until I took it to the sink and used some stainless steel scrubbing pads along with straight Simple Green degreaser. It also worked to finish cleaning the varnish and carbon deposits that even a strong petroleum based degreaser had trouble with. On the engine side I used a stainless steel semi-blunt scraper also from Autozone. There is no way a local mechanic could take the extra time to clean the gasket surfaces and the pan. The car has 93,000 mi and I had just flushed with AMSoil and still had some surface sludge and carbon.
Hope this helps.

 

This is just a FYI, since you already have it off and cleaned up by now. One thing that will break silicone loose clean as a whistle is heat. The original gray is especially tough. If you use something like a pencil torch it won't burn the pain at all. Small concentrated flame on the pan lip will release the pan from the silicone absolutely clean. Then use a new razor blade run almost parallel to the sub pan surface. Silicone generally cuts quite easy. Finish cleaning the little bit of silicone remnants with lacquer thinner. It is the one thing that I know of that will release the silicone clean from the aluminum "sub pan". You have to be able to get to it to cause it to release the silicone, hence the reason it won't release the pan originally. Cleanest way I know of to do it without gouging or bending anything.

 

First, thanks to everyone for the advice. I tackled the job this past weekend with my father in law. He came over yesterday to work on it with me, and on the way over to my house, he stopped by Autozone and they said they actually had a gasket for the oil pan (a cork type of gasket). He bought it and brought it over. I was hesitant to use that gasket, as the original gasket was the silicone kind, and all of you recommended the Toyota silcone part (pictured in an earlier post). I had concern for this cork gasket, but my father in law told me it would be fine to use, and I figured that if it leaked, we would just take it off and use the silicone stuff. So, I took off the oil pan (used a small flat blade screw driver GENTLY tapping it into the space between the pan's). I then spent a lot of time cleaning the oil pan and the flange up in the engine to prepare it for the new gasket. While I cleaned everything, my father in law started to work on getting the sheared bolt out. After about two hours of working on it, we finally got that bolt out! We couldn't get a perfectly straight hole drilled into the bolt remant, due the placement of the bolt and the condition of where the head was broken off. We ended up drilling two very small holes in the bolt and bent a small nail into a "U" shape and used vice grips to hold onto it while we backed out the broken bolt. On a side note, the bottom of the oil pan had some "crusted" oil residue. It was only on one side of the pan, and didn't look that bad. It still concerned me that there was this burned oil crust though. The car does have 128,000 miles now, so maybe that's normal.

After cleaning everything really well (getting the old silicon gasket off and getting the oil plan perfectly clean), we went down and bought this gasket adhesive spray, the copper kind that is supposed to tolerate high heat situations, and sprayed the gasket down with it. We also masked off the inside of the oil pan and sprayed the rim of the pan with it. It made putting the flimsy gasket on really easy! We put the pan back on and put a new bolt into the hole where the broken one was and filled the engine with oil. I have driven it about 30 miles thus far, and no leaks.

Thanks again for all the advice. It was a pretty simple job, although that bolt was a real pain to get out, but that was just mostly time consuming as we didn't want to make it any worse than it already was.

By the way, does anyone recommend a 0W-30 weight oil for the RX300, or should I just stick with the 5W-30 it recommends? Since I wasn't sure if the cork gasket would work, I went ahead and just put in "dino" 5W-30 oil last night. My plan is to make sure that after a day or two of driving, that there are no leaks and then put the regular synthetic stuff I always use back in with a new filter. Since I read about the oil sludge problem in these cars, I was just thinking that the 0W-30 oil might be slightly thiner and flow easier than the 5W-30 oil that Lexus recommends.

Thanks!

 

I don't think there is any advantage to 0w-30 in a warm climate. Plus I would think that the thinner oil would tend to leak a little easier. It's only thinner when it's cold so I would not screw with it.

 

I used that gasket on my DIL's RX about 25K mi. ago (I too was leery of the cork gasket, I have never really liked cork gaskets but discovered it when I opened the package) and so far it has been fine. My experience with cork gaskets is you NEVER tighten them too tight, and if they begin to seep a touch, hand tighten them only slightly so that you don't squeeze the cork out. I would have used the silicone, but I figured that it was a lot easier to remove the pan this way, to get an occasional look in the bottom end than it is if you use silicone. You have to be really careful when using silicone that you don't use too much and have excess hanging inside because the part that is directly exposed to the hot oil does not want to stay attached they way it does where it is not exposed to oil or other petroleum products. I read on one forum of a man that lost an engine due to oil starvation. When he removed the pan, he found the oil pick up screen completely blocked by prior use of excess silicone that had all come loose over time from exposure to the hot oil and was sucked up against the screen. It's an excellent sealer, but use sparingly, according to directions. If a little is good, more is definitely not better. I have even read of the rear axle fluid being filled with ground up silicone from an overenthusiastic mechanic that evidently owned stock in GE.


Concerning the burnt oil crust- my DIL's RX had the same thing randomly deposited throughout the engine. I don't think it necessarily hurts anything. It's because these engines run VERY hot CRANKCASE temps. (Not engine coolant temps) One thing you can do if it bothers you is use Auto-RX for a couple of oil changes. It is terrific stuff and does actually clean that stuff out in time. It's not a flush, totally different and takes some time to work, but does work. Then if you want to keep it from reforming, use a REALLY GOOD synthetic oil, like German Casrtol. A lot of people swear by Mobil1, I am not near as sold on it. A spotty history. Generally if synthetic has been used from day one, the burnt crust shouldn't ever form. Even a good dino oil will form it, just a hot CC.