The labor will be a lot more than $194, and I mean a whole lot more. Having resealed the oil pan on my 2009 I can understand why the part costs so much. Everything mounts to the oil pan so it's very substantial. That also drives up the labor because so much must be unbolted from the pan to pull it.
Good luck!
Sent from AutoGuide.com App
Resurrecting an old thread here.
I am working in this area replacing a crankshaft pulley. The threads of my oil plug were damaged by a shop (not me I always used a torque wrench and did all the oil changes) when I got some tire work. Probably a neophyte went around tightening bolts as a 'check' and 'tightened' the oil pan plug. This is why one needs to use caution where they take their Smart for service and don't forget the wheels are 15mm not 17mm bolts like a lot of cars requiring less torque. Easily, carelessly can be over torqued by an ignorant servicer and stripped by an air gun. I have managed to install the oil plug without leaking for 4 or 5 oil changes and it works the way I did it and tightened slightly with a wrench but it bothers me to have these stripped threads in the oil pan..
I bought a used oil pan several months ago from a junk yard. Working in that vicinity changing belts I took a look at the oil pan to see the logistics of removal. Looks like BIG TIME! PIA! The oil pan has 4 threads on the side toward the top you can hardly see from looking under the car. The left 2 threads are the mounts for the AC compressor with one fastener looking like a major PIA to get to. The third thread over has a clamp holding a cooling rubber hose. The 4th fastener on side top (of the oil pan) is another cooling hose holder clamp-fastener.
It might be easier to lower the engine to make it easier (or raising the body I should say) The engineers at the factory did not cut anyone any breaks on self-service ease on some things, IMO.
Another thread has some information here though not much:
2009 Passion/SMP 26Kmiles with a slight oil pan leak. Did the following this weekend: Replaced plugs (Denso Iridium Part# IXUH22) Replaced Cabin Filter (Fram Fresh Breeze CF10132) Replaced Brake Fluid (DOT4+) Replaced Tranny Fluid (Royal Purple Max Gear 75W-90) Resealed Oil Pan (Bosch D3300...
www.smartcarofamerica.com
It does mention: "Remove/install Carrier for Front Engine Mount." The author of the post claims it took "3 hours" to take two fasteners off and one hour just to put one fastener back in and one fastener he couldn't put back in.
I did take a halogen light under the car and lit up the area. The car needs to be raised higher. The side fasteners that are very hard to get to (to remove) look like normal metric heads (like 10mm perhaps). It does look like according to the other post about this, that the front engine mount needs to be removed to get a wrench in there for the furthest-right fastener.
According to a video I saw about a mechanic swapping a longer thread bolt (but you loose the wire mesh filter) "temporarily" before he changed the pan (he never changed the pan so he must have felt the longer bolt for the stripped thread was enough considering the effort) MB has the job of removal at 1.6 hours (no way for me to verify) BUT, if that is correct there is a classic way to do this job that is not published. I could not find anything on the 451 pan removal on the Evilution Smart-car encyclopedia site. They apparently do not have a solution (or it is there and I am using the wrong search criteria) There is an easy way MB does this perhaps using a special spanner, etc. IMO today, it you do not do the classic way to do this (unpublished) it is going to be a long winded, frustrating exercise and most likely like the person who posted the above thread link - you will not get both fasteners back in.
It (Smart 451) appears to have a limited lowering of the engine routine: one removes the main mounting bolts (along with a couple other things) and replace, just screw in, with longer bolts (and MB has part numbers for the lowering pin bolts but they are given at Evilution) These act as lowering pins for safe partial engine lowering (to gain engine access) The lowering pins also keep engine aligned to fast jacking back up. MB service probably does this all the time and can do it in 10 minutes, imo. That would explain the 1.6 hour oil pan R&R. (open to correction)
Looking at the Evilution site it appears that partially lowering the engine looks very easy. Looks like lowering could be done in less than a half hour. All fasteners to lower appear easily reachable. Perhaps this is the 'classic' way to do it. (one cannot over-stress the safety considerations of working under a vehicle - I make jackstands/jacks redundant.)
Phil