[b-man]

Decided it was time to drag out the ol' 389 and drop the pan today. Topped it off with a nice '67 326 2-barrel air cleaner I had laying around just for grins.



The pan practically fell off after removing all of the bolts, the gaskets were old and tired. There was a pretty big leak going on at the rear of the pan from what I could see.



The sludge buildup in the sump was pretty thick, anywhere from 3/8" to 3/4" depending on the shape of the sump area. The drain plug was almost buried in sludge.



Here's what I harvested from the sump, a pretty good amount.





One of the features of the older Pontiac engines was this 'floating' oil pump pickup. Perhaps it was designed to keep the pickup above the layer of sludge that older engines were known to accumulate over time, surely the engineers knew that non-detergent oils and leaded gas would be laying down a decent amount of sludge during the engines' service life.





Here's a look at the windage tray/sump baffle, a design that was used up through 1964.





Very thick #1 main cap, looks to be at least 1/4" thicker than on '61 and later engines.



The connecting rod nuts are backed up by a sheetmetal locking nut, an interesting feature that I didn't expect to see.



Here you can see the heavy webbing cast into the block on the passenger side oil pan rail area, a feature that would disappear from common production blocks after 1960.