Years ago one of my friends believed that the pickup shouldn't touch the pan and hot bent it to get about 1/4" of clearance. About three years after this at the top of third gear, the pickup failed at the threaded end and he lost all oil pressure. Oh yeah, it was a '66 Hemi Coronet. IIRC there was just someone on Moparts that had the same thing happen, a crack at the pickup threads with the accompanying loss of oil pressure.

Without the pickup touching the pan it apparently can get into a resonance. This leads to metal fatigue at the threaded end with the eventual cracking failure. No, I'll continue putting BB's together with the pickup touching the pan.