Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
It's been a busy day here today. Although I bought aluminum to fabricate the rear motor plate I didn't get a template made yet to drill my bolt holes. I took the Hemi off it's stand though so we could mount the 426 mock block in it's place. We'll need it on a stand while we're figuring out the accessory components. In order to test fit the mock into the Charger I pulled the hood off and set it inside for now.
We began re-assembling the K-member setup as soon as Spencer got here.
For the most part things went smoothly but we saw some clearance issues I hadn't noticed before with the old K-member. The rubber boots on each end of the rack assembly were rubbing on the lower control arm pivot shafts.
I called Denny up and he said that we could gain clearance by replacing the two 1" aluminum spacers that are between the rack and the K-frame with thinner ones without causing problems. Eliminating them would give us more clearance than what we need and put the rod ends at too much of an angle so we'll do some final measurements before we figure out the optimum thickness we need and he'll send some replacements.
Another concern we had was with clearance for the lines for the power rack. The left motor mount is pretty close. I talked to Denny about this too. He knew it was tight but thinks we'll be able to run some hard lines that will clear. I still need to send him some photos. He's probably right about being able to make it work but I won't know for sure until I get some more fittings.
Once we finished putting the K-frame back together we turned our attention to fitting the engine/transmission.
With 90% of the weight being the transmission I used a strap behind the bellhousing to allow us to tip the assembly into the engine bay. I was afraid to put much load on the plastic block thinking I might break out those rear bolt inserts.
Once we had it in place I marked the bottom side of the floor with a paint marker and began cutting from underneath. Because there were floor clearance issues we couldn't get the exact transmission location but we were close enough to make the initial cuts. I finished the cuts from inside the car.
It's been a busy day here today. Although I bought aluminum to fabricate the rear motor plate I didn't get a template made yet to drill my bolt holes. I took the Hemi off it's stand though so we could mount the 426 mock block in it's place. We'll need it on a stand while we're figuring out the accessory components. In order to test fit the mock into the Charger I pulled the hood off and set it inside for now.
We began re-assembling the K-member setup as soon as Spencer got here.
For the most part things went smoothly but we saw some clearance issues I hadn't noticed before with the old K-member. The rubber boots on each end of the rack assembly were rubbing on the lower control arm pivot shafts.
I called Denny up and he said that we could gain clearance by replacing the two 1" aluminum spacers that are between the rack and the K-frame with thinner ones without causing problems. Eliminating them would give us more clearance than what we need and put the rod ends at too much of an angle so we'll do some final measurements before we figure out the optimum thickness we need and he'll send some replacements.
Another concern we had was with clearance for the lines for the power rack. The left motor mount is pretty close. I talked to Denny about this too. He knew it was tight but thinks we'll be able to run some hard lines that will clear. I still need to send him some photos. He's probably right about being able to make it work but I won't know for sure until I get some more fittings.
Once we finished putting the K-frame back together we turned our attention to fitting the engine/transmission.
With 90% of the weight being the transmission I used a strap behind the bellhousing to allow us to tip the assembly into the engine bay. I was afraid to put much load on the plastic block thinking I might break out those rear bolt inserts.
Once we had it in place I marked the bottom side of the floor with a paint marker and began cutting from underneath. Because there were floor clearance issues we couldn't get the exact transmission location but we were close enough to make the initial cuts. I finished the cuts from inside the car.