Uhhh, can we not clutter this guy's R&D thread?
bluebomber, I would take zer099's advice and talk to Kevin of
Ishihara-Johnson about the oil pan design. Right now the community seems to want a solution to an apparent problem but no one seems to really have a good answer to the problem.
If it were me and I didn't want oil issues on an older DE I'd think about crank scrapers, oil pan baffles, a VE oil pump, an oil cooler, getting rid of the hump in the upper oil pan, etc.
As for the lower oil pan design (or maybe upper and lower?) I'm not exactly sure what would help and what wouldn't. I don't think many of us know what to recommend as a solution.
Kevin is apparently the guy I'd go to for advice. He seems to know what's going on better than us here. Be warned he's in the same business you are, so he might not be forthcoming with info. From the looks of his website though he doesn't seem to be against sharing good info.
Do all of the upper pans have the same mounting holes? As far as I know, all the FWD engines are the same. This is a question for Kevin though.
What capacity should we build them to? You have a lot of space constraints. There's hardly anywhere you can go without running into the front pulley on the left, the engine support in the middle, the passenger's side halfshaft in the back, the A/C components - fans - charge pipes up front and the ground/speed bumps below. You might be able to eek an extra quart of capacity out though, and I can't see that as a bad thing. Or you could do cooling fins, but again, there's not much space. Most of our cars are lowered an inch at least.
Placement for drain plugs? Stock placement or similar seems fine. At the back.
Turbo line taps? Unless people are too lazy or what ever to tap the block for a proper oil drain, I don't see this as a popular option.