I'm doing some extensive work in the Hellhole (pics to follow on my progress thread) in preparation for a future V8 install. The shelf on the passenger side is totally gone - a victim of rust - but the driver side and the cross-shelf(?) that attaches to the firewall are completely intact.

Do these shelves do anything structural like adding to the body stiffness or rear suspension stiffness? If I cut them out do I need to compensate with some other type of body stiffener?

I figure if there's going to be a V8 in there, and I don't need the shelves for cooling flow, I should just remove them and give myself more room for my future install, but I am concerned with retaining the integrity of the rear suspension. Any thoughts?

I am not 100% sure on that one, My V8 car still has them in there and my 4 cylinder car is missing the one on the passenger side. I dont think they are structural as they are not very thick metal. I cut the front one out of the V8 car for clearance. The sides are still in though.

No, they are there just to seal the cooling tin too of the engine. Use a spot weld cutter to remove them as the pieces just come out.

On my yellow car I removed them, they were rusted through and looked like crap. I did reinforce the engine bar support and trailing arm consoles though, for other reasons not due to removal of the engine shelf. On this second car I'm leaving all the shelf metal in place as it's in excellent condition.

do you mean some thing like this, i stole this pic :hehe

i did it on my suby conversion too should not be a problem

QUOTE (scott thacher @ Feb 22 2005, 12:21 PM)

do you mean some thing like this, i stole this pic :hehe

I saw that pic somewhere before, too. That's what made me think to ask the question.