27 Jul 07 - proof-of-concept of the new motor mounts.

The mattresses and most of the other crap is gone, so time to get back to work.

You'd seen, if you've been following, that the steel plate mounts extended too far forward and interfered with the accessories. I pulled the motor out and turned the frame mounts around so they were facing the opposite direction, and moved the steel plates back and turned them around. It seems to have worked pretty well.
Example. Ignore the white crap on the frame, it's the residue from oven cleaner (trying to get the grease off). I'll need to do some sort of flush/countersunk bolt with the rear plate mounts since the mount will interfere otherwise.
Plenty of clearance from the crossmember.
Pass side. Clears the starter, too.
Butted against the top of what's left of the tranny tunnel. I'll have to cut and create a little more free space.
Transmission is HIGH in the car. I'm going to have to remove the rest of the tunnel all the way back to clear the driveshaft. A post on pro-touring.com (you'll have to do your own search there) suggested 2 degrees up at the rear of the tranny. I'm not quite there yet, looks like I'm more like 1 up. After I open the front of the tunnel up a little more I should be able to adjust better.
View from under the car. The crossmember remains the lowest point - the pan is at least half an inch to an inch above it.
I pulled all that expanding foam crap off the sides of the cowl. As expected, much rust damage was found.
The flat part on the front seems like it'd be easy to fabricate, not sure if the sides are reproduced or not. Hope so.
Passenger side cowl is even worse than the driver's side. The volume of leaves I got out of here is quite impressive. I'll have to do some sort of cowl screens when this is fixed.
Alternate view.
Engine is not quite level.
Somewhere along the way, I've cracked my power steering pulley. That sucks, since I've already replaced it once.
I also got all the grease off part of the frame, anyway - mainly with a single-edge razor blade. Sure does look like I'm going to have a lot of room in front of the engine... you can just barely see the bottom of the balancer pulley at the top, and the radiator support mounts are at the bottom left. Still need to take a wire brush to all this, and to clean up the rest of the frame to this level.
I'm OK with notching the frame to clear the alternator or compressor. However, my major remaining concern is with the AC compressor -- it is possible that the compressor will interfere with one of the lower control arm mounts; in that case, my only possible fix would be to get some alternate accessory brackets - which is more money than I'm really interested in spending. Tomorrow is other car-task day -- I've got to do front and rear brakes on the Camaro, front brakes on the wife's car, and maybe if I'm still feeling motivated at that point, I'll tackle the dead power window motor in the Camaro. Once all that's done, I'll start fitting the accessories to see what does and does not clear, and where and how much notching will be needed.

Go back to the previous day (6 Jun 07)