That link to ebay is just the OE splash cover for the crank. The only baffle options for our cars need to be welded in and it fricken SUCKS. I just did it a few weeks ago and had all kinds of trouble since the thick aluminum pan acts like a giant heat sink. The good thing is that, once it's in, it fricken WORKS. I did an autocross last weekend with some long sweepers and had no lifter tick!
I put the VAC baffle in two pans and both needed some grinding/cutting to fit well. If I were doing it again, I would get
the baffle from Achilles Motorsports along with
their oil pump shaft upgrade, which I also installed while doing the OPG:
I tried two methods for installing the baffle:
1.
Alumiweld rods and a MAPP torch - The alumiweld rods are awesome and work great for "welding" thinner materials easily and without special equipment. You just wire brush the surfaces you want to weld (to remove oxidation), heat the surfaces to like 730F with the torch, then scratch the aluminum rod over it. When it works, it's beautiful. For this application, it was a disaster. It was impossible to heat the surface of the thick oil pan without melting the thin baffle. The heat of the torch was immediately pulled away from the surface of the pan and into the rest of the body. I managed to get it good enough to hold, but I went through all of my rods and made an absolute mess:
2. Aluminum tig welding - After my issues with the alumiweld rods, I took the other pan/baffle to work and let a guy in the shop try to tig it. He ran into the same issues of the heat being pulled away from where he was holding the torch on the pan, as the baffle melted like butter. He managed to get it welded, but it was an ugly mess and there were some new holes burnt into the baffle. It was vindicating seeing him have the same issues that I had with my "stupid little rods." It came out better than my alumiweld mess, but was still rough:
***If I were to do it again***
In all of the beating my head against the wall watching videos of people using alumiweld sticks, I came across
this genius that put the cast aluminum part in a grill to preheat the entire thing to 4-500F. This greatly reduced how much heat was pulled away from the weld area and allowed him to use the alumiweld.
So, the ideal process would be:
1. Remove and clean the hell out of the oil pan.
Grez-Off and a pressure washer worked great for me.
2. TEST FIT the baffle and make sure it's going to slide right in and lay flat.
3. Scrub the areas you want to weld with a wire brush to remove oxidation. The aluminum will immediately re-oxidize, but it'll be thin enough to scratch through with the alumiweld rod (hence the technique of scratching it onto the surface).
3. Find a grill large enough to hold the entire oil pan and throw it in. Crank that shit to max and leave it for a while to get up to temp.
4. Open the grill (leave the pan on it to maintain temp) and set the baffle in place.
5. Use the torch to heat the surface up until you can scratch the rods on and get to welding!