The engine, a 350 SBC, is fully assembled and broken in on the bench. (yes i attached water to the inlets via garden hoses.....)(and, yes, i am partially deaf now.)

Now it needs to be installed.

Obviously the front bar is attached and everything I can think of is attached.

My plan is to balance the engine on my motorcylce jack, slide it underneath the car and start jacking. So to speak.....

If anyones installed a SBC what are some tricks to making this a little easier than the mess I'll probably make of it?

Here's how I install mine. I jack the car way in the air by placing a 2"X8" on the floor jack and under the bulkhead, I roll my assembly under the car, I lower the car down over the motor, the rolling stand I made allows me to move the motor as needed to line up the mounts, Once the car is on the ground and off the jack, I lift the transaxle up a little and slip the rear transaxle ear slots over the long bolts. Then I use a clamp to hold the bolts into the slots while I move to the front and slide the front bolts into the cross bar. once I have the rear bolts clamped the front bolts drop right in. All I need to do is tighten everything up and it's done. No jacking the motor up to the car. I lower the car over the motor. Simple...

When the motor is bolted up I jack the car up about 2" to get the rolling stand to disengauge from the cross bar.

I use the same method described by Rick with the attached furniture dolly.

A couple of areas that may save you some time/head scratching:

1. The drivers side valve cover (when using "tall" valve covers) more than likely will touch the bulkhead in the area that is concaved to allow seat to slide in to. I can't give you a measurement, and can only offer that you get her in, mark contact area, lower drivetrain down several inches and then dimple area with BFH or similar.

2. I advise removing distributor cap during install and watching the trunk springs as dist. gets close to this area. Once you clear the springs, your pretty much home free. You can just unlock dist. cap and place between carb/dist if you've already installed plug wires.

John

Hey John,

Whatcha running these days? I appreciate you are still active in 914club.

QUOTE (Neo914 @ Jul 11 2005, 12:31 AM)

Hey John, Whatcha running these days? I appreciate you are still active in 914club.

Felix,

My latest ride is a 2000 BMW 540. I will say with all the new v8 and subby installations going on, the itch is about to need a scratch : )

John

Found a pic of valve cover where it makes contact.

John, I had that same problem with the valve cover when I installed mine, funny thing was, when I dropped the transmission to resolve the clutch issue I had, the engine moved back and was perfect when I put the transmission back in. The drawback to that was the exhaust system was made and installed already and it no longer lined up right. I now have it all back together and everything is fine but if you have it hitting the firewall, try moving the back end of the tranny around and it should line up. I run the tall valve covers to clear the rollers. Short covers were not an option for me.

I found that lifting the engine while the car has it's back end way up in the air causes clearance issues while you're tilting the drivetrain to match. Having the car close to level makes the mating much easier. So whether you're lifting the drivetrain into the car or lowering the car onto the drivetrain, everything level before the join is safer for the dist and other parts. Good justification for all those jackstands.

Just my $.02,
Eric

Mulholland 2003 - Renegade Peel video

Hey Roger, you asked for this link awhile ago, just remembered to look it up.

Eric

Thanks so much guys.

I'll take all of your advice and jack that puppy up, slide the motor/trans under her, lower it down on it so it's close to being level, and do some tiny jacking to get it bolted in. With the dist cap off. =-)))))))

I can't believe it's really coming along.

I'm so excited, and watching that vid of Peel doesn't help....