One wire lock-up, 4 spd automatic w overdrive into A-body.

Well, it's a lot of time consuming work building a motor, installing different intakes and heads and adjusting 1.65 to 1 Chevy rocker arms, which I've never done before, and welding up and gusseting my K-member with the Firm Feel kit.

The pushrod plates that guide the pushrods are a bit of a pain to get just right because they move if you don't tighten them down in small steps. I pre-oiled the motor using my corded drill. It's just to hard on my cordless drills and burns them up unnecessarily.

I tried to take my time and not make any mistakes, but I still had to do the old one step forward two steps back on a few items. I still need to make new brackets to hold my fuel rails steady, as my last set was for the beer keg intake and the Hughes brackets are for the stock fuel lines. I like that kind of fabricating though.

I have the car up in the air in preparation to get a stiff wire wheel on my angle grinder to run along the torsion bar crossmember seams to prepare them for welding. I don't like welding upside down, but I think it will really strengthen the entire crossmember by doing so. I've got to pull the seats, carpet, insulation and center console, and then scrape any seam sealer off before I start welding. It al takes time. I'll try and get more before, during and after shots. I really didn't take too many pictures of the engine being assembled, because this thread is about using a bellhousing on a 200R4 in an A-body not putting together a motor. I will soon see just how much notching of the torsion bar crossmember this is going to take. I am also thinking of using 6" or 8" square plates and welding them to the junction of the subframe connectors, the front longitudinals and the torsion bar crossmember to tie them all together a bit better. I'll weld them with the corners of the plates running down the frame rails and maybe drill a hole in them to help keep dirt from collecting on them. We don't have problems with rust out here thankfully.

The nice part about this bellhousing approach, one I got the torque converter measurements correct, is that is bolted together in a few minutes, it's out of the way of almost all other components and it looks clean. You be the judge as it compares to the adapter plate method.

On a performance note, I have the real low profile air intake on the throttle body to clear the hood. I had to use a 1" spacer to get the throttle arm not to hit my aluminum fuel rails. You can see it on the third and forth pictures. It barely cleared my hood. I'm hoping I can run a taller, full-sized air hat now that I don't need that spacer. I'm pretty sure the short air hat will be a restriction on this motor with the increased displacement, ported aluminum Eddie's and the bigger cam.