| Way back in October '04 I figured it'd be pretty easy to have the
engine swapped out over the course of a winter, but it just wasn't to
be. I spent a good deal of January chasing small parts and put
myself out of commission for February and March '05 by herniating a disk
in my back (probably a result of playing with the D20). Here is
the 350 ready to be installed (early Feb '05.) using the same "roll it
over a series of pipes" method
employed to remove the Cerlist. The engine rests on its crossmember
which is installed to prevent damage to the oil pan, and the rear of the
engine rests on the flywheel |
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| Once the Chevy 350 is rolled underneath the van, the hoist can be positioned
and the engine raised. Once the
engine is raised into proper position, the crossmember bolts are loosened.
This allows for enough slop in the mounts to
allow for lateral positioning of the rear of the engine once the
transmission and transfer case are bolted in place. |
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| After the transmission mounts are secure, the crossmember is
tightened up and the hoist can be removed. Click here for a View from below.
The bolt-on was to be a temporary solution to get the van up and running
quickly, and would have been welded in later on, but as nicely as it
worked to hold the engine, I would later find out it wasn't going
to work at all. |
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| I busied
myself with other things for some time and hence didn't realize a big
error was made untill after I reinstalled the front axle. The
engine crossmember hung down too far and was only one inch from
the differential housing. The fuel pump
is also a little close for comfort, but that can be fixed by using an
electric pump near the tank. |
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| Time to start over! |
| I spent quite a bit of time sketching out different methods of
supporting the engine. Nothing I designed was to my liking and
finding a compatible urethane or rubber mount proved impossible.
So I decided to go with this kit from Novak Conversions. The kit (Novak# MM29
$121.00) has been redesigned to allow a Chevrolet 350 to drop down
between a Forward Control Jeep's frame rails without removing the
exhaust manifold and is adjustable for height. The kit comes as
shown in the thumbnail. The image on the Novak's webpage for part
#MM29 has not yet been updated to show this change. |
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| When bolted to the engine, the Novak mounts span 28.5".
To fit between the frame rails with the added thickness of four pieces
of plate I had to trim off a half inch or so on each end. The
picture to the right is an early mockup with the new mounts. The
cardboard will be cut to make a template for a piece of plate that is
necessary to cover a couple of
holes in the frame. |
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| Now its a simple matter of tacking the plate to the frame, the frame
bracket to the plate, and double check positioning with the mockup
engine for clearance issues. |
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| Completed installation with axle under load. Note clearance
for the harmonic balancer is not quite as great as I'd like and the
front drive shaft hits the starter at rest. A new set of properly
arched springs and a little tweaking of the engine position and I should
be good to go. Nice thing about the Novak engine mounts is there
is quite a bit of vertical movement in them. A close up of the
completed mounts can be seen here. |
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