While I admire your creative idea about Drilling an Access Port in the front, upper Crankcase area to be able to unscrew the Oil Pick Up Tube Flange Bolt... Short of TIG Welding a tiny cover plate over that hole afterwards... you would need to use the most appropriate flavor of JB-Weld to seal up that Port. That being the case... before attempting anything quite so exotic... perhaps you can attack the problem using JB-Weld externally... and use Acetone and Dremel out the Damage (with extreme care not to injure the snout of the Crankshaft) to obtain a better purchase and surface contact area and then fill in the damaged vacancy with shaped JB-Weld and then re-install your Front Timing Cover Seal.
Conversely, you could simply use the Acetone to clean up that same area... and then apply the JB-Weld at the same time you are Cautiously Tapping in the New FC Seal... flush with the Front Cover; leaving it to sit overnight and hope that subsequently... no oil can escape from around the margins of the seal and cover, ensuring that no JB-Weld gets onto the inner PTFE Seal.
As I had mentioned to Mooseman, I wish I would have gone the route of fixing the old timing cover instead of going through this mess, but I thought that drilling and tapping a 20mm hole to get access to the pickup tube bolt would be easy, but God I was wrong.
For future reference for anyone considering this route, merely accessing the bolt is only half the battle (all of this is probably abundantly clear to experts such as yourself and Mooseman, but for a lazy dingus such as myself, it was not). Once you have the bolt removed, you have to also pull down the pickup tube about a half an inch or so to uncouple it from the oil pump (at least for the 1st design tube and pump you do). This is impossible because the tube impacts the oil pan, so my 20mm hole turned into a roughly 4x2 inch access panel that I cut out with a dremel and punched out with a cold chisel (this was actually much easier than drilling a hole due to the angle of the oil pan and the frame getting in the way, unscrewing the top of the passenger side motor mount and jacking the engine gave me a few extra inches to work with).
You cannot simply pull the timing cover out and up to try and disconnect the pickup tube that way because the timing cover cannot clear the crankshaft, so movement is limited.
As far as patching up the "access panel" I created, I have large piece of aluminum sheet metal that I was planning on using and for buttoning it up, I was planning on doing the following:
1. Create template and cut the sheet to overlap the edges of the hole by about an inch or so.
2. I was nervous using JB-Weld alone, so I was planning on using several self-drilling sheet metal screws to mechanically fasten the sheet to the pan. I may however forgo this route because if the JB-Weld were to fail, I doubt the entire panel would fall off at once and a leak would slowly develop so I could just watch the ground where I park and keep an eye on it (I don't take road trips in this beast).
3. Where the edges of the hole contacts the sheet, I was going to run a small bead of an anaerobic gasket (which should not create an issue when the gasket seeps into the oil pan once pressure is applied), then adjacent to that all the way to the edge of the sheet I was going to rope a bead of QuikSteel Reinforced Epoxy putty and smooth that out and onto the top of the edges of the sheet. Then once all of that cured, I was going to JB-Weld over it all and taper it out onto the oil pan which should provide a good amount of surface area for the epoxy to bite (I will have cleaned the pan with a wire brush and solvents to promote adhesion).
Even if you successfully created the Crankcase Access Port... with due consideration that both of the Oil Pick Up Tube fasteners are of the "Trapped" design... there is no guarantee that you would be able to correctly thread that bolt right back up inside of the TC Cover-Gerotor Oil Pump Portion of the Case... and you would risk Smearing the GM ACDelco Special RTV or not being able to get ALL of this work done before it completely prematurely Vulcanizes within the short allotted (10) Minute Cure Time.
"First... Do No Harm...." Hippocrates
Can you please elaborate on this? Are you saying that because of the limited room I have accessing the innards of the oil pan with the timing cover on, I may not be able to get the pickup tube to fully mate into the oil pump without re-positioning the timing cover and messing up the seals? If so then that is definitely a possibility I need to look out for, thank you. I'll do some dry runs to make sure I have enough room to manipulate the pickup tube and get it seated. The sealant I plan on using (the timing cover I bought from [
Rock Auto] came with Mahle brand aluminum sealant ) states that I need to hand-tighten all of the bolts then wait an hour before torquing them to spec, so do you think this one hour window will allow enough time to get the tube and pump mated?
I also have a few more questions that you guys can probably help me out with:
1. When transferring the oil pump from the old cover to the new one, should I be using any type of assembly lube or Vaseline or grease to pack the space between the inner and outer gears and also lube the outside of the outer gear where it contacts the timing cover (the shop manual only says to use engine oil to coat the parts and makes no reference to priming the pump or using grease or assembly lube)? Or could I prime the pump by pulling the fuel injection fuse and cranking the engine for 5 seconds or so once everything is all buttoned up?
2. While looking at the gerotor gears of the oil pump, I noticed that on the outer gear there was a definite alignment mark (a dot), but there was no type of mark on the inner gear, front or back. I'm an idiot and the marks I had put on the gears and timing cover to note the positioning of the rotors in relation to the timing cover got wiped off while I was handling everything. I can replicate how I believe they should fit together, essentially positioning the gears so the two mating points between both gears exist between the input and output ports (like in the top row, 4th image here)...
Does anyone have a better idea of how they should/could be aligned?
3. I know that the crankshaft sprocket splines on the inner gear and the crankshaft must align, but is this something I can test fit and adjust with the oil pump attached to the timing cover, right? Ideally, I guess I would test fit it before I add the gasket material, and rotate the crank to align as needed, then lock the crank again via the torque converter access hole and 15mm socket trick.
4. Found the quote below in another thread...
Has anyone confirmed whether or not the old oil pump case will work with the new timing cover casting? Looks like the bolded quote below is stating that it's unknown if the new pump will work on the old timing cover, so my situation is the opposite but still applicable. If no one knows then I guess I can be a guinea pig since I am too stubborn to, at this point, drop the pan and replace the pickup tube with the 2nd design.
Courtesy the help from @Mooseman… The arrival of the New OEM GM Timing Cover (Part # 1260934) fitted with the OEM Gerotor Oil Pump (Part # 12576249) allowed me to make a series of side-by-side visual comparisons with the Original GM OEM Timing Cover (Part # 12569166) and the Stock OEM GM Gerotor Oil Pump (Part # 24577543). The significant differences are as follows:
http://s557.photobucket.com/user/60...NEREPAIR/TIMINGCOVERGEROTORPUMP?sort=3&page=1
NOTE: AS LONG AS THE OLD STYLE GEROTOR CASE COVER AND GEROTOR PUMP, GEARS AND BYPASS VALVE SHOW NO SIGNS OF DAMAGE OR WEAR AND A BRAND NEW BLUE “0” RING IS USED FOR THE OLD STYLE OIL PICK UP TUBE AS A PAIRED SET… IT WILL PERFORM NOMINALLY AND SHOULD GIVE DURABLE, RELIABLE SERVICE… SO IT IS NOT MANDATORY THAT IT BE REPLACED.
(1) The Timing Cover castings are NOT identical between the Older and Newer Style Timing Covers, The interior areas that handle the nested, directed oil flow cavities opposite where the Gerotor Oil Pump bolts to the inside of the Timing Cover are markedly different. Therefore I cannot swear that the Sealed-Power OEM quality replacement Oil Pump that has the Updated Oil Pick-Up Manifold that matches GM Timing Cover (Part # 1260934) and uses the New Style Oil Pick Up Tube will work or not ...even though the casting bolt holes and support bosses align and allow for it to fastened in place on either Timing Cover.
5. Can I install the crank seal on the cover before mating it to the engine, or should this be done after the timing cover is installed?
Thank you so much, guys!