Haha, it's pretty hardcore that you yanked it off in the Hooters parking lot.

Err... no pun intended, there.

 

I can't stop the 'accidentally' thing, it made my YEAR, and now it comes out w/o thinking. Same thing happened after watching 'Strange Brew', I absorbed a bunch of stuff. Often say 'Beauty' where most would say 'cool' or something. Bunch of other phrases out of that movie too.

Anyway, heres the secret(s) to welding an oil pan, or any cast aluminum for that matter..

You can't try to weld it in one pass. Well, start at the beginning. Don't bead/sand blast it to clean it if you would otherwise feel inclined to, you'll only pound sand into the aluminum and end up with a dirty weld. Clean it repeatedly with a solvent, and use shop air to blow it dry, or mainly to blow the solvent and debris out of the crack. Only use a stainless steel wire brush to mechanically clean the aluminum (same reasoning for not using a sand blaster)
Weld it in 2 passes, first pass only hot enough to start melting the aluminum at the edge of the crack, just to roll it over a little. No filler. All you're doing it 'cooking' the rest of the oils/solvents/air/gasses/whatever is in the aluminum. It'll burn and leave a lot of black crud along your weld path. Go back to the stainless brush and brush it clean. For everything but the dirtiest/greasiest metal, that should be enough, but if you still get a ton of soot when you try welding it, do the cooking thing and wire brush again.
Like my pic shows, drill out the ends of the cracks. The metal will expand as you're welding it, and it'll actually make the cracks grow just like a cracked windshield will grow it you push on it. General engineering thing, no sharp corners anywhere, they're stress raisers. Drilled hole is a nice radiused end for a crack.
Preheat if you can, localized heat leads to warping, alternative it to weld just a little bit at a time. I welded probably 1.5" of each leg of the cracks in my pan then stopped for a couple minutes to let the heat spread to the rest of the pan before I continued. Stopped again before I welded the inside.

Easy!

 

was your skid plate on when that happened?

and if your loc says vermont. and your car says NY.... where are you tomorrow?

 

if by skidplate, you mean that flimsy plastic thing that can't stop more than air/dirt from getting in your engine bay... no, its not on.

I live just north of Burlington VT, but I came from upstate NY. I'll keep the NY license and registration as long as I can because insurance wise, its cheaper, not to mention, I'm 7 months past my inspection, and as long as Im in VT I'm safe. They're not looking at out of state inspection stickers.