Plastic! Since its invention in the 20th century, this versatile material has taken over the world. Automakers love the stuff, using it to replace more expensive metal components wherever possible. It’s a popular trend with the cost cutters and one that enrages owners in equal measure. For as Nissan demonstrates, when you go plastic, it’s not always fantastic.
Meet the Nissan Rogue. From 2022, it shipped with the KR15DDT inline-three engine, good for 201 horsepower and 225 pound-feet of torque. It was efficient, decently powerful, and generally considered fit for purpose in a compact SUV. It also featured a plastic oil pan.
Nissan is far from the only automaker to employ plastic oil pans over traditional steel or aluminum parts. However, when it came to the Rogue, it made a critical design error. It takes only a minor twist to destroy the part, and then you’re left with no oil at all!
Twist With Care
It all comes down to the oil pan drain plug. On the Nissan Rogue, despite the plastic oil pan, the drain plug itself is still a metal. It threads into a metal insert that is heat-set into the plastic pan itself. The problem is that if you over-torque the drain plug, it simply rips the metal insert right out of the oil pan. Suddenly you’ve got an oil pan with a big open drain hole and nothing to screw back into it.
At this point, your oil pan is trashed. Since it’s plastic, you can’t re-thread it, and you’d have a hell of a time reinstalling the heat-set insert once it’s trashed. Someone could manufacture larger heat-set inserts to fix this problem, but it would be messy, hard to install, and highly likely they’d leak in short order.
Realistically, your only recourse is to buy a new oil pan. The OEM part will cost you a healthy $296.93 from Nissan USA, including a new gasket and drain plug. Alternatively, an aftermarket part will set you back $60 or so on Amazon.
Amusingly, forum posts note the problem doesn’t always make itself obvious when tightening the plug up. If the plug has been over-torqued, it may still sit in place for the time being. Then, when the next tech goes to untighten the drain plug, the insert comes with it, and the oil pan has to be replaced.
“It’s user error!” you shout. “Not Nissan’s fault!” That might be a fair assessment. Regardless, the Nissan Rogue has a low torque spec for the drain plug. You’re not supposed to exceed 25 foot-pounds when installing it. It’s not devastatingly low, but it’s low enough that it’s easy to exceed without trying. It’s lower than the spec for the 2022 Honda Civic (30 foot-pounds), but higher than a modern Ford F-150 (19 foot-pounds). However, neither of those vehicles is widely known for having an easy-strip oil pan.
Plenty of mechanics have run into this problem. Often, the pan doesn’t fail instantly on over-torquing—instead, the threaded insert comes out the next time someone tries to remove the drain plug.
In any case, the problem is so bad that Nissan felt the need to issue a bulletin in January 2022, just a few months after the KR15DDT engine hit the US market. “NEVER tighten the drain plug greater than its specified torque,” reads the notice, emphasis as per the original. It hints that Nissan quickly identified a spate of pan-stripping incidents shortly after the new engine hit the market.
Of course, you can do some damage by over-torquing the drain plug on just about any vehicle. On a traditional steel or aluminum pan, you can still strip the threads. However, you have to turn a heck of a lot harder to do so. For example, the torque spec on a Ford Crown Victoria is 44 foot-pounds for models with the aluminum oil pan. You can exceed that to some degree without damage. Even if you do trash the threads, you can still generally save the pan. You can either rethread to a slightly larger diameter or fit a helicoil insert so you don’t have to pull the whole sump.
It is entirely possible to make a plastic oil pan that doesn’t suffer from this issue. Notably, BMW used plastic transmission pans on the E90 that used a simple twist-lock plastic drain plug. They avoid the over-torquing problem because you don’t so much torque the plug as twist it into place. You’re also aware from the outset that you’re working with something fragile because the plug itself is plastic, too.
Another solution is just to better design the heat-set insert so that it doesn’t pull out when lightly over-torqued. Designing the insert with a flange on the back would make manufacturing more complicated, but would also make it far harder to pull out of the oil pan without really wailing on your socket wrench. It’s unclear whether or not Nissan has actually made any changes to the oil pan in later model years. For now, the problem is most well documented with 2022 and 2023 models.
Ultimately, Nissan won’t face a huge backlash on this one, beyond a loss of customer goodwill. Every time a threaded insert is yanked out of a Rogue’s oil pan, it can just shout “OVERTORQUE!” and point to the official specs.
Still, this problem happens often enough to suggest Nissan could have created a tougher oil pan from the outset. In any case, if you own a Rogue yourself, forewarned is forearmed. Stick to that torque spec religiously when you’re doing your own oil changes, and make sure your mechanics are doing the same.
Image credits: Nissan, Amazon, Bruce & Shark, Small Engine Guys via YouTube screenshot
Don’t take your Rogue to Jiffy Lube. The pan will never survive their ugga-dugga gun.
Why you’d want anything but a stamped-steel oil pan is beyond me. I mean, look at where it is…I want something that’ll dent, not crack or shatter.
Tightening to 25 ft-lbs would feel like a LOT to an old air-cooled VW mechanic where 5 ft-lbs is the max for the oil screen nuts.
I can’t take any company that uses plastic oil pans seriously. Like how David says no car with a timing belt is reliable, that is how I feel about plastic oil pans.
” no car with a timing belt is reliable”
Hondas aren’t reliable?
Ha I don’t agree with David’s statement but that is the point I was making about plastic oil pans.
How difficult is it to manufacture a stamped aftermarket oil pan?
Maybe Nissan owners are lucky it’s not one of those flimsy aluminum pans from the dollar store.
I agree it’s not the best design, but rubber expansion freeze plugs are a pretty common repair ‘tool’ – why can’t something like that be used in this application? Hot engine block, under pressure, and those work – why not here?
I would certainly use one in a pinch when the car had to roll, but I do know that the rubber used on those expandable plugs will degrade in the presence of hot engine oil, causing an eventual serious leak. Possibly enough to run the motor out of oil before the driver realizes it – not good for a permanent fix.
I’ve stopped using the word “plastic” at all in my life… I always refer to plastics as “space age polymers” and my kids keep telling me that I need to stop living my life as if I was in an 80s infomercial.
Better living through modern chemistry?
‘Suddenly you’ve got an oil pan with a big open drain hole’
Can flex tape fix that?
Probably plastic for emissions reasons. Helps keep the oil at a more uniform temperature or something since plastic is far less conductive than metal. Nevermind the water pollution when it fails and dumps a gallon of oil down a storm drain.
Oh wait, it’s a modern Nissan. The Japanese Yugo. Nobody will change oil ever after the dealer freebies so problem solved.
It’s most likely a cost-savings measure, and it also reduces weight by just a tad.
The solution would be to pump the oil out of the dipstick instead of draining it, but that has always seemed to me like a half-assed way of changing oil.
Not if it gets all the oil out. If the MityVac has close to the rated amount of oil removed, that’s a complete change.
I did oil changes on my old car for over a decade and 250k miles that way. It never had a lubrication related issue.
If it is indeed easy to replace the oil pan, I’m thinking the engineers missed that piece of low hanging fruit. At least Nissan priced the plastic piece to make money.
At least it’s not like the 2004 Honda Accord that list the first step to replace the oil pan gasket as “Remove engine.”
Guess we dodged a bullet by buying an off lease 2021 Platinum. Same vehicle as 2022, but the old, 181hp 2.5L. There may be other bullets to weather, but plastic oil pan? No thank you.
But doesn’t it have the motorsport-proven Jatco Xtronic CVT? You’re golden!
Great, now he’s going to show up and say stuff. Hope you’re happy.
Not gonna lie, that person makes my day when they show up! The relentlessly positive spin and makes me laugh. Plus the dedication to the bit.
Go change the oil in the CVT, like, right now, regardless of mileage (unless you 100% know it has been recently done- a dealer’s presale “full service” is usually nothing more than an engine oil change and pencilwhipping a checklist). Then do it again every 30k- that will substantially improve the odds of it not blowing up.
Frankly if a part has less ability to handle torque that can be overdone with a man with a spanner it should be panned. Of course if the metal insert in the plastic oil pan was screwed in instead of straight groves less likely to strip.
I had a similar problem with the very soft oil pan metal in my ’88 Jag XJ6. Some gorilla had previously over-torqued the oil drain plug which was made of harder metal and when I removed the plug parts of the pan came out with the threads. Fortunately this is a known problem with a known permanent fix for about $250 but it was still a stupid problem to have.
Couldn’t you plastic-weld the hole to build it back up, and then re-heat-insert the insert?
If the insert rips out I would just plastic weld that whole thing shut and just start sucking oil from the top for oil changes.
There is a parts vendor called Bruce & Shark?? That sounds awesomely Australian.
Right across the street from Mate & Snake
I’ll just say it’s not the choice I would have made for the car if asked.
Maybe the next step will be to just not include a drain at all, and instead put a drill bit and plugs in the glovebox. Each oil change, just drill a hole somewhere in the oil pan, and once the oil is drained, stick in a plug. Looks like there should be room to drill at least a couple dozen different holes, what could go wrong?
They should have done a twist lock plastic plug, similar to Ford in the F-150.
This is the elephant in the room here. The engineers on this one had the mind set of: “Okay how can we screw a metal oil drain plug into a plastic pan?” Instead, they should have realized that the only reason oil drain plugs are threaded is because drilling and taping for a threaded plug was the easiest method of making a removable plug in a metal oil pan 100+ years ago. Making a molded plastic part gives you so much more flexibility with manufacturing. A twist-lock plug is just something that can easily be done with plastic.
This appears to be the second biggest issue on these engines with the first one being how often they blow up.
That’s exactly right – how many of those engines need more than one or two oil changes before they are replaced? Particularly since Nissan owners don’t seem to be big on maintenance.
In Nissan’s defence: read the manual. Follow the service notes.
I mean, they could have moulded the torque limit warning into the pan, for free. But they didn’t. So maybe it is lazy stupid design.
Or, I guess, pay more for a car with less focus on saving money during manufacture. My last BMW had a steel pan bolted to its magnesium block with single use aluminium bolts. The pans all rust out around the oil level sensor (no dipstick, because fuck you customers!) then you just have to jack up the engine and hope none of the fragile bolts snap. That steel pan was nearly a grand, because BMW.
Nothing shocked me quite like growing up with 80s BMW’s only for the time to come when I could afford my own car and get a 2007 N54 (surely after 2 decades they’re even more reliable, right??). The things that were made of plastic or the lack of a dipstick etc was comical. Dreams and wallet crushed. No BMW, ever again. Ever.
1980s Subarus with the EA82 DOHC used this type of brass insert in their plastic timing belt covers. The bolts were only 10mm,* so you’d think over-torque wouldn’t be a problem, but the majority of those cars I owned ended up with zipties holding the covers on.
During my Better Living Through Adhesives phase, I found that PC-10 had enough shear strength to secure the inserts. -As long as I used aluminum anti-seize and a 2-finger grip on a 1/4” ratchet
* maybe 8mm? Been more than a decade
A Fumoto drain valve solves this problem. I’ve put these on several cars going back to the ’80s.
https://www.fumotousa.com/f103sx.html
came here to say this.. put it into all my cars, don’t need crush washers etc anymore.
a great improvement..
A buddy of mine does all of his oil changes with a dipstick oil extractor. Admittedly, he changes the oil more often than most, but he says it’s worth it to not have to deal with an oil tray and crush washers.
So worth it if the engine can do it. I did a friend’s oil change last night that way. Their car has the same engine my old car had. It worked just fine like I knew it would.
I forgot to ask him how he deals with changing the oil filter. In my experience, there’s always a bit of oil that comes out during that part of the procedure.
Every six months or so, I get a coupon in the mail from the local Honda dealer for a $19.95 oil and filter change with synthetic oil. Yes, I have to listen to the list of other “recommended” service items, but it’s worth my time.
Some cars make it easy with the filter accessible from the top. The 1.4T I know all too well has that. All the oil drains down when the engine shuts off so it’s only a few drips. Thanks, Hengst, for making GM a well designed cartridge filter!
That engine has a 10mm drain plug that is very easy to strip the hex head off. My friend’s car likely has it tightened to ten ugga-duggas since they previously had it serviced at repair shops. Plus it doesn’t drain cleanly. So topside is definitely the way to go.
Yup this is the way. I’ve done it to all of my cars and now mom moms 2015 Grand Cherokee. Those and several other Chrysler/Stellantis vehicles are notorious for having plastic oil pans with stuck drain plugs Draining takes longer but it forces me to check other things out more thoroughly while the cars juices are slowly drained. Either that or watch an episode of King of the Hill.
I’ve seen these and would love the convenience, but like using a vacuum from the top, does it really let out all the sludge that might be on the bottom of the pan? My oil’s always pretty clean, but I like knowing it’s flushing the bottom.
Thoughts?
Steel bolt in a threaded brass insert is not my favorite. If the threads on the bolt are the least bit damaged you will gall the threads in the brass insert and it will take a mountain of torque to remove the bolt. Brass is soft and steel is hard so the bolt wins every time and the brass threads end up getting damaged. Clean the bolt threads carefully before reinstalling the drain plug.m and use a new crush washer every time you remove and reinstall the plug.
Somebody should let professional wrestlers know there are plastic oil pans out there. Would provide some great variety beyond the usual garbage cans and steel chairs if they could hit each other with oil pans and pretend they are solid steel.