March 3rd, 2007
I skipped working on the car last week because of other matters. Well I finally put in the 500 motor and transmission, as you can see:
Nice stacks eh? Lowering the engine down onto the mounts is not the problem with the 500/472 engines... it is the bolts on the passenger side mount that are a pain to get at. They are located behind the oil filter mount as shown:
You look at it and say, there is plenty of room to get a wrench in there! B.S.! I had the camera up close when taking this shot. I did not want to remove the oil filter mount so I had go underneath and contort my arms to get the socket on one side and an 9/16" end-wrench on the nut. After many failed attempts (the nut would fall on me or the ground or the engine cradle) and a torrent of vulgarity that got complaints from my neighbors one half mile away, I managed to get the passenger side done. The driver's side mount was done in considerably less time even with the fuel pump in the way.
Here is a picture of that magnificent cross member that takes up a lot of time to remove:
You can kind of see some light reflected off of it because I removed five pounds of dirt that was caked on. Before putting the transmission cross-member back in, I used the transmission jack to lift up the transmission. I used a rubber mallet to tap and pound the cross-member into position and then I bolted the ends first to the frame with the bolts facing up and the nut in the channel. I soon found out I made a mistake.
When I lowered the transmission down, the cross-member holes did not match the transmission holes. So I loosened the end nuts on the cross member, tapped on it with the rubber mallet until it matched up with the transmission, bolted it and tightened the bolts at the ends. Even with the mistake, it took about 30 minutes to do this.
Another derby tip I use on the transmission and cross-member is chain them both together so the transmission does not jump all over the place.
The last thing to do was install the driveline. I did not take a picture because this is the simplest thing to do. I used last year's driveline because this car did not come with one. Once again, save your parts from your previous car.
Total time spent: 3 hours.