I'm in the middle of a heads and cam swap and like lots of people I ripped the oil pan gasket when taking off the timing cover...oops I have the fel pro blue gasket and am now in the process of getting the old gasket off. when I was taking off the oil filter to help with access to the oil pan bolts I noticed that the piece that the oil fulter screws onto was loose. The bolt in the center of the threds could be turned by hand! What exactly is that peice where the filter screws onto and the ( I think tranny cooler lines run into???) Will anything be damaged if i totaly remove it so that I can put new gaskets on it? Also what are the other gaskets that come in the fel pro oil pan gasket set for? Thanks for all of your help in advance!!!

 

The part you're referring to is the oil cooler. 95 M6 cars were equipped with a oil cooler. Coolant from the water pump is routed to the aluminum housing that the oil filter mounts on (sandwiched between the block and the oil filter), and then returned to the bottom of the radiator. I deleted this stock cooler as it's not a very good heat exchanger and if the small internal screen (oil passes through) clogs up, you can starve your engine of oil and spin a bearing. The feed/return lines can be capped off at the waterpump and radiator, the cooler housing can be removed by removing the loose center threaded piece (that you already discovered) and the associated lines.

 

Awesome... thanks thats what I thought it was! I ended up taking it off anyway to replace that oil pan gasket which i did and it turned out good. So what brand of oil cooler is a good one to replace it with? What is the torque value on that bolt holding the oil cooler on?? Thanks for the info

 

My recommendation is to delete the oil cooler. Automatics and 96+ don't have an oil cooler. In my opinion you don't need one; I drive around with a Vortech blower that adds additional heat to the oil and have never had an oil issue in 142K miles.