So, apparently Ford build the entire Edge around the oil pan. It's attached to, well, pretty much everything else under the hood. The exhaust Y pipe covers the pan so you have to drop that first (you're going to want to stock up on PB blaster and have a hefty breaker bar for this one). Also, the oil pan doubles as the mounting bracket for the a/c compressor pump. That means you have to remove tension from the belt that runs on the compressor so you can remove the compressor from the oil pan. To do that you have to remove the passenger side tire and inner fender to get to the belt tensioner (or cut the belt like I did). The oil pan is attached to the front catalytic converter mounting bracket so that had to go. Lucky for me the nuts were rusted beyond recognition and rounded off with ease. I should have taken the time to cut the bolts off but I used brute force and mechanical advantage to bend the bracket out of the way. It worked but I don't recommend doing it that way; I snapped the bracket on the front of the engine that I was prying against. There were still serious clearance issues with the pan being sandwiched between the front catalytic converter and the transmission mount. Also, there were at least a gazillion bolts to remove. When you think you've gotten all of them start looking for the "secret" bolts (hint: they're in hard to reach areas). It took almost two hours, one "frustration" break, two skinned knuckles, one beer, and a dab of cursing to do it, but I finally got the pan out from under it. I did take a ton of photos. What's the best way to upload those?
