I was so in awe of the car....that I FAILED to bend down and look at the stupid skid plate...!!!! Left 2 or 3 rolls of unused film in the rental car also... duh! Boy, what I would have taken pictures of today if I knew what I know...... IT was and probably still is a VERY nice car, but is suffered from one thing.....lack of use! All of the interior had sort of a fuzz growing on it....where if fingers had been involved...probably wouldn't have been there! It was kept in a climate controlled garage with CAV002 GT40, two 67 Vettes (his and hers of course!) and a Jag XKE that was in progress.
My car seemed to have a few extra holes in the cross member.....that looked sort of caved in also!
What people fail to realize is that these motors were regular old 68 Mustang 302's....and those oil pans were fairly restricted to their use in 68 and 69 from what I know. Many of the 302 oil pans sold as proper....are only the substitute part when you order one from the dealership...or from the aftermarket....(which year pan did they copy????)
The 68 pan from what I recall of crashed and dented lower engine photos, shows a drop in the center front of the sump where the drain plug went. Most later ones have a side dump....and may vary in depth again, because of revisions made and then shown as "backwards compatible" to 1964 or so....!
The stock pans were about even with the bottom of the bellhousing when installed in a Mustang. Check out the next 68 or 69 when you see it at a car show....or around....
I don't like the idea of anything "oil retaining" hanging below the frame rails, especially at the front of the engine..a tapered pan with rear pickup would be good...once your wheels start over a bump, the car rises clearing speed bumps and driveways! Different story for big rocks! ....have heard tales of owners backing out of their driveways and loosening the drain plug...! Bad bad thing!
IF you have a mangled one...they can have the dents worked out with body tools..the pan is pretty danged thick material! Weld up cracks...file it all down. I even saw inserts in the Fastenal or MSC catalog for the threaded portion that the drain plug screws into....the inserts were spot welded into the pans in three spots I believe. Any leakage around this insert was stopped by the nylon gasket on the drain plug. The stock drain plugs were a large headed thing....7/8" or 15/16 or so.....
SOOOO if you really want to be proper and correct, you need to rob a pan from your neighbor's garden variety small block Mustang and give him a "brand new NOS" pan......yuck yuck hah hah! Wouldn't be the first time....
The oil pans are also date coded! Some have a part number stamped in them....but that could be just for special pans like Boss 302's etc.
There are some other posts about skid plates....some rather long...... but who knows how many variations of this were made......
Glad to hear you are "almost" out of body shop jail!!!!
Steve
PS: Note that in the above picture, that the upper frame rail and supports have been changed by a previous owner to accommodate a not stock engine and some REALLY bastardized exhaust manifolds! ...could have built some nice headers.....!