Body Work and Engine Mounts

Bo and I originally had agreed on a location for the engine, based on the direction I wanted to go with the build. BUT, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided to go with a much more conventional solution. This meant NOT lengthening the drive shaft, but instead keeping the engine in its same relative location to the differential.

I personally cannot believe I actually just wrote that, and understood everything I said. Bo will make a gear head out of me yet!

Anyhow, I spent literally four hours last night with a tape measure, a level, some pencil and paper and Adobe Illustrator trying to figure out the optimal height for the engine. You wouldn't know it, but there's actually a lot of factors to consider, and I wanted to make sure I triple checked everything.

Even then, there's still room for mistakes. The good news is that even if I am totally wrong, we can always undo what has been done. It may not be fun or easy, but it's not like we're pouring concrete or anything.

Here's how things look as of right now. We have the engine on jack stands, set at the height we want it to be relative to the frame, which is all the way down on the bump stops. This will be the cars "Display Height." When I park, I will blow all the air out of the bags, and this is the height it will sit. The critical measure in this position is the height of the engine relative to the available space inside the shell.

You can see that the drive shaft is in place.

Here you can see Bo starting to build out one arm of the passenger side motor mount. The current design will have three arms, forming something of a tripod.

And here he is, Bo The Welder, earning his moniker.

But it's not all blogging and video making for me! I'm doing work too! I've been focusing on body work on the drivers side of the car. The gas cap recess is looking really good, as is the main seam long the leading edge. This is just about ready to be hit with a coat of heavy fill primer in order to reveal all of the flaws that will require attention

I've also put together a couple new episodes of the web series lately, so if you are behind, episode 23 is the most recent.