Home Made Belly Pan

Here’s the latest project we got finished up on the Nova, it’s a Belly Pan to comply with the recent NHRA rules for Diaper or Belly Pan. Since the Nova has a Dry Sump and the pan is pretty tight fitting to the crossmember, a diaper would have been quite difficult to setup on this car, so I opted to make a belly pan.

I made this out of some scrap .040 thick aluminum sheet and bent all the 2″ tall sides by hand. It would have been a lot easier and a bit better looking with a brake and to weld all the seams, but had to make due with the tools available. The seams have an interior plate over them and siliconed to keep them from leaking.

I welded two dzus mounts to the front tube crossmember to attach it there, made two plates that attach at the middle crossmember, and there are two dzus mounts in there rear (see photo). Other than the bolts in the middle, it would be very fast to install and remove. I couldn’t come up with a way to use dzus fasteners in the center though.

It fits close to the pan as there is no extra room to let it hang down very far or I’d be ripping it off when loading and unloading the car. All that’s left now is to buy some Pig Mat to glue down inside the pan and this project will be all finished up!