More Engine Mounts - 90% there now

Well a day spent in the garage has resulted in the engine mounts being almost completed. I've fabbed up the right hand mount. This one I decided to make in a single piece, without the necessity for a central bolt as it doesn't have the nearby waterpipe obstruction that hampered the left hand mount.


Here it is in it's 95 % complete form. I just need to trim off the excess material and fit a strenghthening gusset.


With the second mount in place, even with the bolts not tightened up the engine is pleasingly "solid" with no play or movement, careful measurement between the bulkhead and the markers for the centre point of the exhaust camshaft indicates that my fabrication is within 1mm on each side. Fab.


So now I could move onto making up the mounts for the gearbox. These will be located onto a chassis cross member. This I also had to cut out, trim down and move further forward in the chassis, in fact you can see the stubs of the old fitting that I still need to grind off the tube. These mounts are made from 1"x"2 rectangular section with some bracing tubes welded in. The plan is that these will be welded to the cross member, allowing sufficeint space for the diff mounting plates between them on both sides of the gearbox. Again I'll fit a strengthening web, as the diff is a faily hefty piece of kit and I want it very solidly mounted to the chassis.


Lastly I positioned the diff in its probable final position in the chassis. It all looks like it will line up nicely along the longitudinal axis so thankfully it looks like all my careful measuring may well have paid dividends. Once I've welded the lower mounts in place I'll be in a position to take a whole load of more measurements to finalise the rear shear plate for the chassis and the diff mounting plates that Graeme at Nova will make up for me.

So Now I need to weld these mounts in, then remove the engine and finish welding various bits that are just tacked in at the moment. Then I can clean up and paint the engine bay, and finish paint the mounting hardware. Once that is all done the engine can be permananently fitted.