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Here is the latest and greatest on what I have accomplished this week in the evenings:
1) Engine Installation: I removed and reinstalled the engine on mounts that I purchased from Brothers. These are Heavy Duty mounts that sit in the smallblock location. They are designed to handle high torque/big block engines. But that lead to another problem. I purchased a set of headers from Hedman that were suppose to fit my application. NOT EVEN CLOSE! After calling Hedman's tech line and being completely frustrated with their attitude, I decided I will never purchase another Hedman product. I called Hooker, Dynomax, JBA, and Sanderson tech lines, with no avail. All of them had similar designs, with none of them taking into account the front engine crossmember. I cleaned up my cast iron exhaust manifolds, applied a coat of high temp. black paint, and bolted then in place. They look pretty good and I'll do the trial and error fitting of headers later on.
2) Transmission/Transfer Case: Both units are installed, the torque converter is bolted up the the flywheel, and the torque mount on the transfer case has been rebuild with poly bushings and installed. I've ordered an electronic kickdown kit from Lokar for the transmission. The 400 transmission is 3.5" longer than the 350 it replaced, therefore the crossmember had to be relocated. Since I slid the engine forward 2" to clear the firewall, the crossmember actually only shifted back by 1.5". Good thing because the rear driveshaft on these short wheelbases are already steep with 6" of lift.
3) Rear Axle: Now that the transfer case is positioned, I cut loose the tack welds on the rear spring perches and angled up the rear axle to reduce the driveshaft angle. There is alot of guessing in this area. Since the body isn't installed yet, the springs aren't compressed to normal ride height. I guessed that the springs would settle a couple of inches with the body in place. I'm going to use a constant velocity rear driveshaft, so I angled the axle so that it aimed about 3" below the transfer case yoke. This makes up for 2" of body drop and another 1" for torquing of the axle.
4) Gas Tank: Installed the new poly gas tank. Tried to use the old straps, but found out quickly that they were fatigued. Trying to get those straps in position and keep the tank positioned was more of a challenge that I anticipated. But it is done.
As for this weekend:
Bending the hard brake lines for the rear axle and installing brackets to hold all the lines.
Clean up the gas tank skid plate and mount it.
Start installing the engine accessories.
Rick
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