Period correct oil pan for 289 FIA?
 

What is the correct oil pan for the original 289 FIA's? I'm looking at an Aviaid road racing pan, or the aluminum "Cobra" road racing pan. Which is correct for 289 FIA?

Aluminum Cobra pan is less expensive, but if you take a good blow from a rock...

Aviaid road racing pan for the 289/302 is nice, but pricey.

Anyone know which one is correct for the 289 FIA?

Dangerous Doug

I'm too young to know what is correct but the ERA Assembly Manual States, If I'm reading correctly, that the cobras had a custom made steel pan & that you can source a pan from Aviad, Canton or ERA. I don't know if ERA is selling one of these pans or If they actually modify a pan themselves. Might be worth a call to find out.

Neither really from what is in my library. SAI modified stock oil pans well into 1965 for Cobras, GT350 R-Models, and GT40s. The first magazine picture I remember showing an Aviaid (spelling) brand oil pan was for a 427 Cobra. I have the magazine some place. I think it shows a race car and red street car in a comparison test. By 1966 the Shelby catalogs shows what looks like an Aviaid made steel pan for 289s. The SAI fabricated pans are a lot different that the Aviaid ones I have seen on all manner of Fords since the 1970s.

I have seen a GT350 R-Model version of a SAI made pan at more than one convention for sale at big dollars. The early GT350 race cars used a Cobra pan, which has a long sump, or an aluminum street GT350 pan, or at the end a fabricated steel pan like the Cobra one but shorter so the #2 cross member in the Mustang chassis did not have to be replaced (Ford bean counter savings) with a custom one required with a Cobra length sump.

Several of the photos supplied by Dave Freidman (spelling?) for books show examples of the various fabricated pans SAI used on Cobras, King Cobras (Cooper-Monacos), and GT40s.

The 289 comp and GT350 R pans were hand made in the Shelby race shop. None of the comp cars ever came with an aluminum pan. The Aviad is an excellent substitute. In the Daytona book, Pete Brock mentions that the pans were a method of inclusion into the race shop as a brotherhood as opposed to an employee. With a new fabricator making one to be examined by other techs to see if it passed muster....and they did not take kindly to a failing grade. The aluminum pans were dismissed outright due to their 'production' status. Most of the comp cars had a dedicated crew for the season, and that crew made the pans so all have subtle differences and there is no 'exact' style to be found. Usually, they started life as a stock pan, with an inverted T welded to the bottom to increase capacity and internal baffling to control movement. This I have gleaned from numerous quiz sessions at the Nationals, including talks with Brock and Popov-Dadiani who made many pans for his FIA himself. See the Shelby-American #69.

Aviaid are absolutely the correct pans for 289fia cobras. I know the owner of 2138, and his car still has the original Aviaid pan. 2138 is a "1963 Le Mans Replica" team car. The Sebring cars such as 2128 also used the Aviaid pans. 2345, the most original of all FIA cars has the original Aviaid pan from the '65 race season as well. For the $100 difference, you might as well get the correct pan.

Most of the finned Cobra lettered aluminum pans out on the market are T-pans which were used on GT350's. Street cobra's used either a stock pan or an aluminum finned pan that did not have a a T-sump (but still had cobra lettering on the sides). At one time, Blue Thunder was replicating the correct street cobra pans.

I copied the following from Aviaids Bio:

In 1955 Tom Davis was having oil pressure problems with his boat motor. His modifications worked so well that he began
building pans for others. Specializing in boat pans for several years he started building pans for sprint cars, discovering
that he could swap them for tickets to the races. And so began the custom oil pan industry.

In 1961 Aviaid Metal Products opened as a commercial sheet metal job shop that also built oil pans. By 1965 his original
personal project had grown into a business supplying pans for many forms of motorsports including boats, sprint cars, stock
cars and road racing cars. One of these customers was looking for a solution to an increasingly serious oil pressure problem
being suffered by his Can Am cars. As cars got lower, there was less room for an adequate wet sump pan. So using a scavenge
pump design from an Allison aircraft engine Tom took several sets of stock oil pump gears and his drawings to a local machine
shop. The result was the first belt driven externally mounted three-stage dry sump pump developed for American motorsports.
That was 1967. Since then Aviaid has built pans and pumps for a long list of stars from all forms of motorsports worldwide.

During that time Aviaid continued to introduce new features and enhancements for competition oiling systems, including
cam drive pumps and cast iron pressure sections.

After Tom's death in the late eighties, the company was acquired for its commercial sheet metal business. The oil system
components continued as a sideline until mid-1998, when the oil system products were split off into a new, separate company
dedicated to the design, manufacture, development and distribution of these products.

Aviaid today manufactures two lines of externally mounted oil pumps. The most familiar one, the Series 1 Competition oil pump,
is actually the 2nd pump design created by Tom Davis. Its familiar round shape has been manufactured for over 30 years. The
new Series 2 Pro-Line oil pump was designed to incorporate features and specifications necessary to address today's
requirements for certain specific applications. In all cases Aviaid seeks to supply high quality oil systems suited to each customer's
requirements. Using premium materials, CNC manufacturing techniques, and exact processing standards we have created
modular pump programs that can serve a user's need, regardless of how general or specific they may be.

To complete the oil circuit we have added the broad selection of plumbing products offered by XRP, Inc. and the standard setting
dry sump tanks manufactured by Patterson Enterprises to our catalogue. We can offer our user a complete package that is more
cost effective than the components purchased separately, and offers the benefit of proven compatibility. Being racers ourselves we
understand the need to offer products that fit and work, as well as ones that are available when needed. We look forward to
serving our customers' requirements. It's almost as good as being in the race ourselves.

They are held in very high regard regarding Oil Pan fabrication and oiling system hardware and plumbing.

Rick

Aviaid makes nice pans for sure but I would dispute SAI using them until Ford’s efficiency experts over ran them after about mid 1965. There are many published articles on Ford getting deeper into SAI operations and putting in lower cost substitutions. Some like the 428 powered “427” Cobras are quite famous. In the SAI leaf spring chassis team fabrication and competition time original frame people that worked at SAI, including Mr. Peter Brock, say they made their own oil pans. Period pictures have been published to illustrate the point. I tend to believe the people that did the work.

At one of the SAAC conventions in the mid 1980s, one of the SAI Team fabricators gave a talk where he described how their favored car lost its engine and hence the race at one venue because their fabricator forgot to descale the welds in the oil pan after he made it. He described how flecks of rock hard weld scale came loose and made their way to the oil pump and other critical places. He didn’t describe a pan from a supplier. He said one of their fabricators made it from a stock pan that came with the engines as they arrived from Ford.

Doug,

A source I would check and not mentioned above is Armando's Racing Oil Pans in the LA area. Check his web site out at aroilpans@aol.com. Armando worked for Avaid for years and is well a customed to working on Ford pans.

When I needed a pan for a Daytona Coupe, which he lists, he said he had one in stock for immediate delivery. He asked me some questions about the engine and I told him I was running a Canton main stud girdle, he said the top of the pan would have to be a little different than if I were not using the stud girdle. So he would have to make one up for me to handle the Canton piece. This attention to detail is part of his service. Just a thought.

bkozlow

Dan and I exchanged emails off line. He is correct on the pans. I was confusing period pictures of 427 pans with 289 pans.

From what I hear, the Armando pans are nice units as well and are slightly cheaper.

Mike

I have one of Armando's pans on my 289. It is of high quality, and I'm quite satisfied with it. The welds are very nice without a hint of any leaks. It is cadmium plated. I would recommend this pan and vendor to any of you considering a replacement. It appears to be a duplicate except for the decal/sticker.

Rick

http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/d...re_159-med.jpg

A street cobra aluminum pan is attached. For an FIA replica, I would surely go with Aviad..doesn't come any better.

I speak from sad personal experience with the slabe sided Cobra oil pan shown above. If you are going to track your car, get a pan with baffles. I now run an Aviad on my NEW engine. VIR , where SAAC will hold the national meet next summer, has many elevation changes and I destroyed a main bearing, etc. by oil starving the engine with the slab sided pan. I ne3ver had any trouble with other tracks, but they didn't have the elevation changes with the curves at the same time.

Jim,
Would the GT350 style T pan be better? THey are baffled, but I am not sure they would fit.

Good info. Think I'll go Aviaid or Armando, one of the two.

Ain't Club Cobra a great resource? Thanks for your help.

DD