[b-man]

Rather than get into any complicated fabrication or pickup replacement, I think that simply rotating the pickup downward will be all that's really needed here.

I couldn't get the camera at the correct angle to read the measuring tape accurately in either picture, but they're both hanging down at about 7-3/4" from the pan rail.

I'll further adjust the tip of the fixed pickup so it's about 1/4" from the bottom of the pan. This matches up pretty close to where the original swinging pickup would be hanging down with no sludge in the pan, and at pretty much the same angle as well. The swinging pickup has a shield on the bottom that can actually touch the bottom of the pan, but the pickup screen is about 1/4" above the shield plate.

These older engines were cleverly designed to compensate for the heavy buildup of crud that accumulated at the bottom of the sump. Non-detergent oils and leaded gas created heavy deposits and the engineers planned to get around that with this design. The '59 pickup actually has a float inside it, I couldn't fully submerge it for cleaning without weighing it down.

[421-6speed]

I ran into the same issue when putting my 60 389 together. Like you I had the new melling pump and pickup and was worried about getting the pickup as close to the bottom of the pan as possibe and lay pretty flat. Then holding the two pumps with pickups side by side discovered that angling down the pickup on the new pump was the same as the original swing pump. Also as you mentioned the original pickup has a float so in essence with the pan at correct oil level the pickup did sit level and quite high above the bottom of the pan.