Like a fine wine, the big-block Chevy’s competition chances get better and better — almost daily — as the aftermarket continues to release new parts for the venerable platform.
Moroso Performance Products has a brand-new oil pan design for blocks like Dart’s Big M and other similar castings. The oil pan works in cars that are typically found in the Super classes: Super Gas, Super Comp, even Top Dragster, where competition is fierce and thousandths of a second will determine a race on many occasions.
The new pan (PN 20485) offers a number of features to enhance usability. There’s a notch in the front of the pan for alternator clearance, and in the interest of strengthening the design, Moroso added some bracing on the pan’s edges to combat the high amounts of vacuum these types of engines experience.
“We’ve added an O-ring drain plug in the front of the pan to allow easy removal in a dragster, and at the rear corner there’s another plug that works for door cars. This plug is right below the oil filter location, which means you can use one pan to drain both your filter and your pan out,” says Moroso’s Scott Hall.
There’s also an adjuster screw built in to allow access to the inside if the engine is equipped with one of Moroso’s billet oil pumps. An AN-8 fitting is located on the same side of the block to allow the installation of cylinder-head drainback hoses, which is common on both conventional and Big Chief-style heads.
Internally, there’s a solid-louver tray, and 1/8-inch more depth built into the bottom of the pan. This is important because with high amounts of vacuum, the bottom of the pan can be sucked upwards, and this extra clearance prevents the bottom of the pan from touching the bottom of the pickup and starving the engine of oil.