Center iron bottom hole?
 

I bought a rebuilt 87 four port t2 motor from my buddy.. I swapped it into my 85. The oil pan was leaking so I pulled the pan off the replace the gasket... I noticed the threaded hole in the bottom of the center iron was open... I got a t2 gasket ,which is wrong since I have a 12a front cover and gslse oil pan.. The t2 gasket has a tab sticking into the center to seal this hole. The gslse gasket does not.. Can someone please tell me what this hole/port is and if it needs to be plugged.

it is where the engine mount used to be.

forget the gaskets, liberally apply sealant alone around that area and normally around the rest and let it set up for a day before putting oil into it. mazda never used gaskets, it is just something some of us adopted and then threw in the trash can later on, because they just cause issues. the fact that the gaskets are available doesn't mean you need them.

I flooded the engine... Fuel in the oil ate the grey silicone I used. Last time it ate the black rtv.. I know once my car is tuned I won't get fuel in the oil so much but that's why I was wanting the gasket...

silicon tends to work better than the gasket, the key is to clean everything as well as you can, and then let the silicon dry as long as you can before it sees any oil.

if the grey or black stuff isn't working the "right stuff" works really nicely, or then there is always the Mazda stuff which is usually too sticky for the pan, 8527-77-739

Thanks guys. Since the gasket is 40 bucks I decided to just silicone it again.. This time I tried the permatex form a gasket #1. It's the only one at work I see that's hard setting and fuel resistant.. However cleanup next time may not be so pleasant.. I just hope to get the car tuned soon so I don't have to worry about flooding it again...

Thanks. That's the answer to my original question about the bolt hole! All good and ran it down the road for the first time this year;)

i use ultra black and ultra grey and haven't had the sealant erode from fuel dilluted oil, it was probably just not cleaned well enough or the pan is just too distorted now. it's mainly in the prep work and the bead you lay, the FDs are by far the worst for pan sealing and usually they come out fine.

Well it's got a 85 pan on it.. It leaked at every bolt hole, every inch around the whole gasket... Never had this happen before I flooded it badly and let it sit