3D Metal Printing - Aluminum Oil Pick Up For 2JZ Rear Sump

Every billet oil pan project eventually runs into the same wall: the pickup. You can design the best oil pan in the world, but if the pickup tube inside it is still the OEM steel stamping, you have not actually solved anything. That was exactly the problem we ran into while developing our high capacity billet oil pan for the 2JZ GTE and 1JZ GTE rear sump platform. We needed a custom long pickup to reach the extra oil volume, and once we started looking, we realized there simply is not an aftermarket upgraded oil pickup out there for this engine. So we built one, in two lengths, using 3D metal printing and 5-axis CNC machining together.

This is the OEM rear sump we scanned to start the project. It shows exactly why the stock pickup is the way it is, and why space inside the pan is so tight. Any custom pickup has to route around the windage tray, the pan rails, and the mounting bosses without touching any of it. That constraint is what pushed us toward 3D printing instead of trying to bend and weld a tube the traditional way.

We set three goals for the design before we touched CAD:

• Lighter than OEM. The stock steel pickup is heavy for what it does. Building it in aluminum instead, using metal 3D printing, was the obvious way to cut that weight.

• Anti-starvation. If the pan takes a hit from a curb, a bump, or contact during a race, oil still needs to reach the pump. No single point of failure.

• Serviceable. Engine builders should be able to clean the strainer during a rebuild or an oil change without replacing the whole assembly.

  
  

Before we even touched the pickup tube itself, we designed a baffle kit to go around it. This baffle works with either our pickup or the factory one, and its job is to control oil movement under hard acceleration, braking, and cornering so the pickup is not gulping air at the exact moment oil pressure matters most. Once the baffle geometry was locked, we had a fixed envelope to route the tube through without hitting anything.

Here is the tube routed into position. We made the call to 3D print the flange and the tube as one piece rather than machining a flange separately and welding it on. Printing them together removes a weld joint entirely, which means one less place for the assembly to fail and a faster build process since there is nothing extra to fit up and weld before it even reaches final machining. This is one of the real advantages of metal 3D printing for automotive parts like this: geometry that would be a nightmare to bend and weld traditionally comes out of the printer already in the right shape.

This is the other end of the tube, the base that the crown and strainer bolt onto. This piece is machined from billet 6061-T651 aluminum, not printed, and it is welded onto the printed tube. We designed a specific notch into the joint so the tube seats into the base perfectly for welding. That notch does two things: it makes the weld easier and more consistent, and it prevents any leak path at the joint. Mixing a precision-machined billet component with a 3D printed tube like this is a common approach in low volume performance parts, since you get the strength and surface finish of billet exactly where you need it, and the freedom of printing everywhere else.

This is the strainer. We matched the mesh hole size to the OEM filter so filtration performance is not a compromise anywhere in the design. It will be laser cut from stainless steel, which means it can be pulled off, cleaned, and reused indefinitely instead of being a wear item you replace and throw away.

This is the crown, the last piece of the assembly. It clamps the strainer down against the base shown in image 4. The crown has side tunnels built into it, so even if the pan takes a dent and partially restricts flow at the bottom, oil can still reach the pickup through the sides. That is the anti-starvation goal from the beginning, built directly into the geometry instead of relied on hope.

This is the finished design. The flange and tube being one printed piece instead of two welded pieces is where most of the weight and complexity savings come from versus the OEM steel unit. After printing, the flange face gets faced flat on our 5-axis CNC machine to guarantee a proper sealing surface against the sump, something you cannot get straight off a printer regardless of how good the print quality is. That combination, print the complex tube geometry, then finish the critical sealing faces on a 5-axis machine, is how you get a part that is both light and accurate where it actually needs to be.

Assembled and installed with the baffle kit, this is the finalized design. Long and OEM-length versions are both in the works so we can offer either option depending on which billet pan a customer is running.

And here is the actual part, off the printer, machined, and welded into a finished piece. Between the 3D printed tube and flange, the billet 6061 base, and the laser cut stainless strainer, this pickup is lighter than OEM, more rigid thanks to the one-piece printed tube and flange, and fully serviceable for the life of the engine.

This project is a good example of what Ichiban Industries does for other brands too. Whether it is a one-off prototype like this or a production run, we combine metal 3D printing with 5-axis CNC machining in-house, so a part can go from a scanned reference to a finished, sealed, weld-verified component without bouncing between five different vendors. If you are developing a part that needs complex internal geometry, tight tolerances on the finished faces, or both, that is exactly the combination this build shows off.