So we are now caught up to the last couple months. Those giant holes in the frame rails bumped replacing them up to the front of the line. I am going to do custom sub frame connectors and floor pans while I am in there. Once that is done I am going to do the rockers, as I dont trust the car to not fold in half till the SFCs are in. Once that is done I can deal with cosmetic bodywork like the wheel wells and what not. I am going to shave down the firewall a bit and paint the engine bay while I have everything pulled out. So, enough looking at the car pondering how I am going to fix things, lets get that engine out and see what we have...
For such a tiny car there really is a lot of room to work with in the engine bay.
700R4 has a freaking HUGE bell housing...
What a mess. The rust on the strut tower will have to wait for the frame rail. Trying not to chop out more then I must at any one time.
Poped right out like legos! Okay not really. That rail was very happy in its home. That TC bucket had about a foot of weld and 77 spot welds holding it on. Left it attached to the front lower frame rail to help aid in locating it on the new engine frame rail. Once it is welded to the new engine frame rail I will cut its attachment to the rail that runs under the floor.
Just grab a piece of 2.5x .120 wall square tube and throw it in there. No problem!
okay, maybe not. perhaps I should bevel that end to match the firewall.
And that firewall is soooo thin there, I would sleep better knowing there was a plate to spread that load out a bit more.
Notch out an area for the front cross member bolts that would have lined up exactly at the edge of the tube.
Left the plate the cross member will bolt to about 3inch longer then it needs to be. That is just the width of the plate they had cheap from the usable drops rack at the steel supplier. I will cut it down once I have the rail welded in and I drill the cross member mounting holes. I am just going to drill and tape the frame for the sway bar mount. Do you guys think .120 wall is thick enough to hold the SB mounts itself or am i going to end up having to cut the rail back open and weld in some nuts?
Test fit. Took a piece of sheet metal to the break to join it to the inner fender well. Had to cut it along the top to match the contour of the frame rail. I notched the end of the rail and bent it down on the vise then welded it back up to match the pinch the factory rails have at their ends. I only pinched them vertically. I saw no good reason to match the horizontal pinch the wider factory rails have as these rails are only 2.5" wide anyway.
Left a little notch in the inner fender well where it is contoured in for the brake balancer to mount inside the engine bay.
It sat for a couple weeks at this point. I started work on unraveling all the wiring as I am going to clean up the engine bay before the 350 goes back in. The prev owner left all the wiring for the stock engine, and did a hack job on the wiring for the new stuff. It is all coming out and getting replaced but I want to reverse engineer it all now so I can be sure I dont miss anything. I had 500 measurements, Pics, the factory frame drawings, etc but I was still terrified to just weld in the stupid frame. Considering I have not yet drilled the cross member mounting holes if it is off a 64th it will not terribly matter, but still scary. After a few weeks measuring and checking and pacing I finally grew a pair and started burning things in.
Tack in the rail, but I need to clean out the inside of the car a bit more before I can finish welding it in at the firewall end. The pop riveted floor has to come out and something better swapped in. No point welding to that mess when it is coming out anyway. I will leave the rest of the firewall end welding till I have the SFC in place.
Tacked at the firewall and core support. 5000 spot welds along the inner fender well joint. 4 passes of the thickest welds I have ever laid down along the joint for the TC bucket. That should be more then enough to hold it for now. I will weld the rest of the way around and fill in the 6 holes i drilled in the bottom for plug welds later on. For now I just need it to stay put so i can cut out it's attachment to the frame rail that goes under the floor.
2 little tacks on the wheel side of the TC bucket for now.
So that is where I stopped last night. Next steps are to get the drivers seat out. Get the pedals out, and I suspect I am going to need to pull the dash just to give myself room to work. Cut the frame rail that goes under the floor off the TC bucket and off the floor. Get the floors out, fab up the SFC. Weld in the SFC, fab up the floors. Weld all that in and finish welding the engine frame rails. Then its off to the passenger side. Watched a bit of Musclecar on spike last night. I love when they make back halving a car or fabbing up a whole front suspension look like a 2 hour job then 20 shows later admit they had 10,000 hours into the project.
I was pondering doing DIY coil overs and camber plates while I was at this but I think I am going to hold off for this year. I would like to have a running car by mid spring. Get this part of the project done, drive it a few months in the summer, then pop the engine back out next fall for the next phase of things. Maybe do the coil overs and camber plates next winter along with tearing down the engine and warming it over a bit. Year after that is T56 swap. I am comfortable with this being a 10 year project. I just want to be sure I get to drive it every year for at least a few months. On the upside, i will get pretty good at getting that engine in and out going with this plan....
-Matt
