Well I started noticing some smoke while sitting at stop lights, after the first freak out session I decided to deal with it, it seemed minimal. At first I figured it was just stuff getting stuck to the exhaust wrap, turns out I had a nice oil leak. The entire underside, bell-housing, pan, starter, wiring, exhaust wrap, was all covered with a thin slick of oil. There was never, ever a drop on the pavement though. Instead it seemed to seep out only when the car was running and sloshing oil around.

Tonight I decided to crawl under it and investigate, and good thing I did. I couldn't find exact torque specs on the pan bolts, but none of them were what I would deem "snug". A few I could turn 2 full turns before I felt resistance, and the 2 just above the K member were hand tightened...Oil was seeping out from above and around almost every bolt in the pan.

I put a good amount of sealant on them before snugging them down, unfortunately I didn't have a torque wrench handy but I snugged all the bolts down until I could no longer see oil seeping out from around the gasket. I am hoping I didn't torque them down too much, but I'm almost certain it's better than them being so loose.

My question is, obviously there is going to be a bit of blow-by and a bit of crankcase pressure, but is it normal to develop a leak around that area? The gasket is intact, all bolts are in, and my PCV seems to be working correctly.

At one point the PCV hose did pop off of the PCV valve, but I assume the valve should still operate normally, it would just spray oil on the underside of the hood under heavy load correct?

I am going to give it a night to R&R while the sealant and gasket settle in, but I just want to make sure I am not missing any subtle signs of further damage or catastrophy

Long story short: It's probably a good idea to re-snug fasteners on occasion, and an even better idea to keep lazy mechanics away from your car - OR you might end up with hand tightened pan bolts...

 

just about every gasket leaks on my engine

 

Torque specs can be found here http://ls1howto.com/index.php?category=1
you shouldn't need any sealant on the gasket itself.

I used some loctite blue on mine. Hopefully your pan is easier to remove than an ls1 f-body.

 

Thanks for that, I'll have to check them when I grab some sockets and a torque wrench. I pretty much just snugged them down until I didn't feel that I could safely turn them any further. I'm not a big dude and wasn't using a breaker bar or anything so they should be good. None of them snapped, that's a start! Will let yall know after I run it tonight.