I've bought a 90's Nissan non-turbo 300ZX oil pan to replace my current oil pan. The current oil pan has the hump in the front of the engine, which interferes with the steering links and might get struck by the front diff.
Here's how the old oil pan looked like:
My Nissan non-turbo 300ZX oil pan off e-bay:
This will provide ample clearance from front diff and all the steering links.
So I installed the 300ZX oil pan and oil pickup now, and it fits almost perfectly, except where it mounts to the oil pump, the bolt holes (four bolts) were slightly off alignment, so I thought the pan is rigid enough to keep that area shut, with the rest of the pan bolted shut. I thought of drilling holes, but it was very difficult to get the correct measurement. I'm not sure why they didn't align, but my guess is that my pump and engine is from the 80's models, and the pan is from the 90's models, so probably there's a small difference in the oil pumps.
Got the old oil pan off, now both pans set side-by-side to see how they differ:
The two oil pickup tubes, side by side:
I had a small problem, the front diff didn't provide enough clearance to remove the old pan, or to install the new pan, so I devised the following solution:
Lifting the car off the axle from the bumper with the engine hoist, to clear the oil pan.
Oil pan securely in place, and best part is that it is now blocking the hole that was exposing the flywheel with the old pan. I was so pleased with this positive side-effect:
Old setup:
New setup:
The new pan perfectly clears the front diff and steering links:
Also relocated the dipstick pipe. The VG30 engine has provisioning for three different dipstick locations, one in the front right side (the original location in my engine), one in the front left side, and one in the rear left side. My new oil pan needs it to be in the former, left-rear. So I punched off the brass plug, then I had great difficulty taking out the pipe from the original location, as it seems to be pressed into the block. After many attempts, I finally succeeded with great difficulty. Then the problem arose when I need to press it into the new location. Of course that would be impossible, so I sanded off a layer of the pipe until it was thin enough to be tapped into the new location with a hammer. That worked.
Old dipstick location:
New location:
Notice I had to notch the heat shield on the driver side to allow the dipstick pipe to come through.