1968 Plymouth Valiant First Gen HEMI
Nope, haven’t given up yet. I got a little further last fall before it started cooling off . When it started getting cold the issues with my back pretty much kept me out of the shop most of the winter. Now that’s it’s warming up again we’re back at it.
Last fall I did find a couple of 392 pans so that issue is solved. As the motor mount lugs are the same on the early HEMI and A and LA motors I ordered a set of Schumacher small block to slant 6 conversion mounts to at least give me a starting point when I get to that point. It looks like they will be pretty close but I’ll probably have to do some mods to the frame mounts. While I was researching the mounts I found out the K frame in the 440 car is an aftermarket one set up for spool mounts. The decision has been made to go ahead and finish the mockup on the slant 6 crossmember and then swap K members between the 2 cars when we start on the green one.
I’d borrowed an empty 46RH trans case from a friend at the local transmission swap so with that and the mock-up block and heads on hand it was time for the initial test fit.
As we hadn’t done any transmission tunnel modifications I elected to just remove the OD housing for the initial test fit.
It’s tight but not as horrible as I thought it was going to be.
One of the first issues I ran into was interference between the engine and the steering column.
It looks like this might be a non-issue on the green car however . The floor shift column in that car has a lot shorter mast than the column shift one in the red car (for now we just pulled the steering column and steering shaft on the red car for mock-up). If there are issues with the steering shaft on the green car it shouldn’t be too bad to build a 2 piece shaft with U-joints if necessary. I’ll be installing an EPAS electric power steering unit in the green car, so I’ll be working on the steering column anyway.
And that’s about as far as we got before the weather got cold.