Blackstone 383, page 2

383, page 1  Blackstone heads  Final assembly

Update:  As shipped, the Stefs pan interfered with the steering rack.  See pix on Boom #4 page for shots of the revised pan, including a steering rack clearance notch and relocation of the Vortech oil drain bung.

After local f-bud' Jody Shapiro experienced some serious pain installing and removing his Hooker long tube headers because of the sump "wings" on his Canton pan, I resolved to find a wingless pan.  Stefs came through with the custom pan shown below.  Since the long tubes don't use a crossover pipe, Stefs was able to stretch the sump to 10.5" in length.  Capacity is greater than the stock pan, even after moving the oil level farther away from the crank to minimize windage.   The oil pump is a Moroso 22112 using a Stefs pickup welded on by Craig Hill of Top of the Hill Race Cars.

If you've read the rollbar page, you've already been introduced to race car fabricator Craig Hill.  Craig is also a Superformance Cobra dealer.  Part of the fun of visiting his shop is ogling those Cobras with their flawless construction and really nasty sounding side-oiler 427's.  Both Mike Blackstone and Craig have a lot of road race engine experience, and both pronounced the admittedly 1320-biased Stefs pan as totally inadequate for road race or autocross use.  It has a front-to-back oil control baffle as shown in the pix below left and center.  Craig welded the additional baffles shown on the right..

It turned out that Craig was at Mike's shop the day I snapped these pix to dyno two Cobra engines.   That's him below ministering to a 393 inch, poked 'n' stroked former-351 Ford.

The last bit of welding on the pan was the oil return for the Vortech blower.  Vortech instructions call for the hole to be punched on the driver's side, but since I have a windage screen on the passenger side, we decided to put the AN fitting there, instead.  At first I thought AN hose for the oil drain was overkill, but after cutting the rubber hose off of the nipple on the original oil pan every time the blower needed to come out, the ease of AN maintenance won me over.

NOTE: see update paragraph at the top of this page for Vortech oil return line revision.

For pix of the ported heads and new shaft rockers, click here.