Milodon Oil Pan System - Added Protection

With the windage tray correctly set in place we proceeded to assemble the oil pump and pickup. The pickup will slide into the pump and its bracket will line up with the lower bolt hole on the oil pump, so you don't have to weld the pickup to the bolt. A 5/8-inch open-end wrench can be used to knock the press-fit tube into the pump's body.

With the pickup in place we reinstalled the bolt for the oil pump, which secures the pickup and tube assembly to the pump's body. Using a little thread sealer doesn't hurt here.

From here we needed to grind on the pan baffle for it to fit correctly under the oil pump and fit the contour of the inside rear of the pan. What this little plate does is keep the oil from climbing up the back of the pan and getting on the crank. It sandwiches between the oil pump and the oil pump-mounting boss on the rear main cap.

Here you see the old (left) and the new oil pump. The new pump uses a metal sleeve to properly stay coupled to the oil pump and the rod that connects the pump to the bottom of the distributor. The stock pump has a plastic sleeve. By not using the metal sleeve that is supplied, you will damage the pump.

With the pan baffle in place the pump rod must slide up through the hole in the baffle. It is easiest to do this with the rod attached to the oil pump.

Once the oil pump was in place over the pan baffle, we had to set the windage tray in place. As you can see here, the tray goes under the oil pump bolt, over the pump. This will hold the tray up in the back, but getting it all in place can be tricky.

With the back of the tray secure, the rest of the windage tray is pushed into place. When the tray was evenly located on the studs, we tightened the oil pump and threaded on all of the nuts.

Notice with the tray in place that the farthest stud back on the driver-side is exposed (arrow). The hole is an extra-large hole so oil can drain straight down to the pump. When all the nuts are in place, they are torqued to 35 ft-lb. The upper nut will work as a jamb nut to keep the tray securely fastened. When everything is torqued and tightened, it should all look like this. This motor will now have zero problems keeping constant oil pressure, no matter how hard it goes around a corner.

The final part is the nicely formed, extra-capacity oil pan. Milodon plates all of their pans with a gold irridite process to protect the material from corroding. It not only does the job but also looks good in the process.