Early Bronco Oil Pans & Parts

---

Early Bronco Oil Pan Info

There were two styles of oil pan used for the stock 289 and 302 V8 engines in the early Bronco. The variance in these two pans was in the style of oil dipstick tube used. Initially, the early Bronco came with a slip-in or push-in style oil dipstick. This push-in dipstick assembly had a smooth tube that pushed through a hole in the side of the oil pan. The dipstick was held in place by a bracket that mounted it to the engine, but there was nothing securing it directly to the oil pan itself. The push-in oil dipstick was prone to leak easily, so Ford then transitioned the early Bronco engine oil pans to a screw-in style dipstick assembly. This assembly had a bracket that secured the dipstick tube to the engine block as well, but it also had a threaded nut that secured the dipstick to the side of the oil pan itself resulting in a much more secure and leak-free installation.

While many aftermarket early Bronco oil pans have the dipstick assembly mounted to the driver side of the oil pan, the factory early Bronco oil pan had a passenger side dipstick mount position. Another difference from OEM to aftermarket early Bronco oil pans is that most aftermarket pans are 5-quart pans where the factory early Bronco engine oil pan was a 6-quart. Because of the smaller oil pan capacity on aftermarket pans, most of these pans do not have enough room to support a high-flow engine oil pump.

All early Bronco engine oil pans are pan-fill style rather than case-fill. In a pan-fill engine oil pan, the dipstick enters through the side of the oil pan itself. Case-fill oil pans on the other hand enter through the engine block and make their way down into the oil pan from inside the block.

---