The front cover does not need to be removed to replace the oil pan and or gasket, but the front fasteners of the oil pan do thread into the timing cover. We removed and installed the timing cover here as we were also doing a cam swap.
Depends on your setup, in my case the oil pump tube is bolted to an additional support bracket towards to rear of the windage tray. The book states to raise the motor, but I found out that if you reach in from the driver side you can remove the nut from the support bracket and drop the pickup tube which then allowed enough space to remove the oil pan. Depending on what you are working on, if not a truck, you may have enough slack in the pickup tube to be able to raise the oil pump enough to get the pickup tube un-bolted. Reginted has a few videos on his channel that show this. Here is mine where I was able to remove the pan without raising the engine, but even in that case if I was not replacing the oil pan/windage tray I could have just stopped with dropping the oil pan as that gave enough room to get to the bolt. How I did mine on the 6.4: th-cam.com/video/BkOPYjQTKnU/w-d-xo.html
Does the front timing cover need to come off to replace the oil pan gasket or were u just resealing it aswell?
The front cover does not need to be removed to replace the oil pan and or gasket, but the front fasteners of the oil pan do thread into the timing cover. We removed and installed the timing cover here as we were also doing a cam swap.
So I don’t have to pull the motor to replace the oil pump?
Depends on your setup, in my case the oil pump tube is bolted to an additional support bracket towards to rear of the windage tray. The book states to raise the motor, but I found out that if you reach in from the driver side you can remove the nut from the support bracket and drop the pickup tube which then allowed enough space to remove the oil pan. Depending on what you are working on, if not a truck, you may have enough slack in the pickup tube to be able to raise the oil pump enough to get the pickup tube un-bolted. Reginted has a few videos on his channel that show this. Here is mine where I was able to remove the pan without raising the engine, but even in that case if I was not replacing the oil pan/windage tray I could have just stopped with dropping the oil pan as that gave enough room to get to the bolt. How I did mine on the 6.4: th-cam.com/video/BkOPYjQTKnU/w-d-xo.html