Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
I spent the 4th in the garage trying to make a little headway. Normally I put some tunes on the computer to listen to while I'm working. Today I listened to the audio book 'Being George Washington' by Glenn Beck instead. I know that everybody's not a fan of his but I believe he does a good job with his recounting of historical events.
I think we've settled on which design to go with for the Charger's transmission mounts but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to get the steel we need. In the meanwhile I turned my attention to the engine plate for the funnycar. I ran up town and got some poster paper for making a template. It's pretty straight forward how to make one using a marker for around the perimeter of the engine rear and then I simply used my fingernails to form an imprint of the hole locations. It sounds crude but I seem to get decent accuracy with this method.
After transposing the template onto the aluminum I used a center punch to mark my holes and drilled them out. The bolts are 3/8" and that's the size I drilled. I figured that if I was off a bit I could easily enlarge or egg shape a few holes. As it turned out every hole lined up perfectly without the need to modify. My biggest problem seemed to be cutting the aluminum plate for the crank clearance. I had thought I'd zip right through it with a jigsaw but the coarse tooth (for metal) blades I had didn't want to cut. I struggled with every tool I had and eventually got it done using the cut-off wheel and 4&1/2" angle grinder.
Happy I'd gotten that far I decided to pick the engine up and transfer it into the funnycar frame. That's when I found out that the cylinder on the cherry picker crapped out on me. - Now it looks like the Charger & funnycar will both be on hold until I get a lift.