The above mount was then fit back into the chassis and the trans bolted to the hangers.
I then held a large aluminum plate against both tubes and rotated the lower tube until the plate would not rock at all. This ensures the curved tube is completely in plane with the upper bar.
With that done, the lower tube was tacked to the hangers, the complete assembly pulled out and returned to the fixture table.
The spacer block went back in and all joints were welded. I welded parts of the underside (the side you're seeing here) and asked that Martin take care of all welds in areas that will be easily seen. My welding skills are really coming along and much as I "want to do it all", when I have access to someone as skilled as Martin, it makes sense to me that I leverage the opportunity.

One more trip from the fixture table back into the chassis. Bolt the trans to the mount, verify the tubes are all correctly located and final weld the trans mount in place!

So there it is. After a ton of head scratching and numerous design changes, the car has its first "Ferrari specific" mod all but completed. There are a couple inches of welding left to do on the underside of the cross bars at the chassis but things are plenty strong to safely work on the car.
Major milestone, for sure.

That looks very cool Chris.

Very clean. Will the truncated trunk hide this handiwork?

@KELTY360 - It will, but the trunk will be removable. And I probably won't run with it in, just use it when/if I need to carry a soft bag, etc. All that assumes I can come up with an exhaust that allows for a trunk!
(I think I can...)

Very nice work!

Beautiful
"The Little Engine That Could"

Oh man that came out great. Definitely worth the effort to go back and forth to the fixture table, the welds are gorgeous!

Outstanding.

Nice work. Great table!

Ok, this looks FANTASTIC. Nice work, Chris!

Saw some hinges recently that had me thinking of you (lol...), but this pic has me thinking about the reverse-hinge, one-piece trunk we were talking about—and it would be a shame to remove this viewing angle from the car. One of the best parts of looking at a Pantera is this angle.

So I am wondering…what about finding a way to attach a CF trunk to the factory engine lid? Suspect it would need bigger hinges at the firewall, and struts to make it nice to open and safe in wind, but could be a lovely thing…as could the nicer hinges so long as you're on the case.

'truncated trunk'......

Phd. in Fabrication and Welding
Stupendous.

I was hoping someone would notice.....

Cardboard to steel. This is just a test piece to see if I like the shape. I have a couple other designs I want to try before committing.

With the trans mount essentially done, it's time to focus on the engine mounts.
At this point, the design has come full circle: all elements of the engine mount have to be removable. Why? Glad you asked! If the aren't, I have to remove the headers to install/remove the drivetrain. I'd rather not have to do that so removable things shall be.

As usual, I need to see things in real life to develop a better understanding of what's what and where so today's effort was to mock up a rough guestimate of the "intermediate" assembly and see how things might fit.

This mock up is just that: not the real dimensional material, barely triagulated, etc. Again, it's just to help me work though design and fitment. Anyway...

The fire wall end of things is pretty straight forward: there will be a set of tabs on the fire wall that will receive a pair of tubes. One tube will run to the front area of the mount, one to the outside.

The other end will have one, possibly two, tubes: for sure, one will run to a spot high on the long and if there are two, the other will run to a lower spot on the long.

In noodling on all this with Martin, we both came to the conclusion that we should chuck the Ferrari headers and build a set from scratch as that'll allow us to get things right where we want them without having to work around a less than optimal situation.

Martin's latest sketch of the removable motor mount. This after seeing what I'd mocked up and chatting for a bit about options.
Working with him is so much fun. We work together really well: Neither if us has much ego around our ideas, there's no holding back on constructive critisism, we're both easily able to say "Oh yeah, I shoulda thought of that."
Best of all, he's got a great eye for style points!

Very nice!!

Mind boggling.

Just my $.02...

It looks like it would work, but I am not a fan of a cantilevered mount. Too much stress on the welds due to all that weight being on the end of the arm.

I can't tell from the pictures, but is there a way to tie the two mounts together with a cross bar? It would help with the twisting a cantilevered mount will experience.

Something to think about?

Clay

Regarding mount stiffness for a cantilevered mount:

If you can find any rate information on the engine mount from Ferrari or aftermarket parts, the attaching structure should be 10x the mount stiffness as a rule of thumb.

You could even set up a test rig to measure the mount yourself to get a close approximation the rate if you had the inclination.

That stiffness ratio between the engine mount and the structure will ensure you get proper isolation from the mount and avoid low frequency driveline bounce modes that will lead to a very unpleasant ride. You want to avoid ending up with a engine vertical bounce mode that is in the 4-6Hz range which will interact with the natural frequency of the human body (seated).

Enjoy watching the progress - great build thread.

@ClayPerrine - Clay - Let me start by saying that there's a lot of engineering/measuring/discussion that I've not covered in these posts. We've been looking at how a cross bar might be incorporated. At the very start, I assumed I could just run a cross bar under the engine, just like in my LS build. The problem is that with the dry sump design, a cross bar (in a convenient location) would hang too far below the engine and raising the drive train to solve that problem means even worse news for the height of the trans output shafts/CV angles.
The decision has already been made that the bottom of the sump is going to be below the bottom of the chassis by about 3/4" and a ramp/skid plate is planned.
As you can see in the pic, the only place for a cross bar is well back from the engine mounts and there's only room for about a 1" tall piece of material.
Remember, this motor moves around a fair bit so some additional clearance is needed on top of that.
Again, nothing is off the table at this point and whatever we end up doing, it'll be over-engineered.

He even shades his drawings, attention to detail i need in this world.

A 1" crossbar is sufficient, it's not structural, it just needs to tie both sides together to stop flex. It would also give you a rear mounting point for the skid plate.

If you think of the assembly as a cradle, I think you will end up with an easy solution.

After another day of design conversation and trying to work out the "best" mount, we came up with this concept. That cross bar / ladder fits into the gap I pointed out in the pic above.
No, it's not to scale, the implied dimensions and angles aren't correct, etc. But it does seem to check all the boxes that we've identified need checking.
And it's likely overkill, which is just what I'm looking for.
I'm thinking it'll be 1.5", .095 wall DOM.

One thing that may change is going to a single tube to connect the side sections vs. the ladder struture you see here.

The rear section is there to pick up that lower trans mount. Based on my research, and given how soft the trans and motor mount rubber components are, that small link/mount is critical to preventing fore/aft movement of the entire drive train. It's got to be accounted for.

What's not shown is how that rear section will tip up and tie into the back of the chassis.

On to fab and fitment!

Hoping you have checked into a competent facility

late to the thread, is this mill from a 360? looking great, cant wait to see her finished

Very cool. Reminds me of the lost art of story boarding, HAND DRAWN concepts in the field. Totally inspiring. I can smell the metal from here.

The intersection of art and skill! Looks amazing.

Chris, hoping that your client has some good "Comeback remarks" to all of the Ferrari peeps that ask him why
When I dropped the flat fan engine in my black six/gt tribute...the 935 guys were hunting me down with their checkbooks: "Hey we can put that fan to good work"
Keep up your amazing skills Chris !

Proof of concept of the "center" tab bracket. This is just a first effort based on a card board template and while I got pretty close, I have a couple changes to make to get a better fit. Plus the final version of all the tabs will be cut from 3/16" plate.

The cradle's upper bar will bolt to the outside of this where another tab will be, while the lower bar bolts to the inside of this with its other tab farther inboard. So, yes, the cradle walls will be slightly angled.

And that ramp that heads forward under the floor will help establish the front section of the under-drive train skid plate/flat floor. I hope to be able to sneak tunnels on both sides with a difusser at the rear.

Here's the CAD rear view of the cradle geometry showing the 1.25" tubing and a 1" OD bung that'll bolt to the above mentioned set of tabs.

Chris
Seeing yesterday what you are doing with the cradle and bracket, I do have some thoughts. Yes, there is one in every crowd. Cut (2) pieces of 1.25 tubing, 1” long. Fish eye one of the ends of the 1” tubing on both pieces. Weld the fish eye end to the ends of your cradle. Weld a nut onto the other end of the 1” piece of tubing. Run a bolt through your bracket into the nut welded onto the short tubing to secure your cradle the the bracket. BTW: awesome build!

Jebus… how tight fitting do you need it Chris? I mean it’s just gonna be welded, wouldn’t you want a nice 1/16” gap in there for weld space? Man that looks good!

@Andyrew Andrew, You've met me, right? As I mentioned after my visit to Singer, my shop mantra is now "Plus or minus less than yesterday!"
I'm happy with the latest design's fit.

Wow- that is a very nice fit.

I have a 914 but always wanted a ferrari so made my 914 into one: LOLClick to view attachment Click to view attachment

And here are the final parts in 7 ga (3/16"), fitted with approximate width bungs, just to get a look at whereabouts everything will be positioned.
The undersides of the lower cradle tubes will serve as the location for the drive train skid plate.

Very nice! Now I understand Martin's sketch of the removable mount. Does the third leg of the mount go to the long or is the exhaust the way?

@Krieger - Andy, Martin's latest sketch was close but changes were made, based on real dimensions. So at this point, the plan is that there will be similar tabs added low on the suspension console that will pick up a wide bung that's aligned with a 3" x 1" cross bar that runs in that gap under the drive train and ties up to the two cradle tubes.
I hope to have the whole cradle mocked in place this weekend so clarifying pics should be coming soon.
Or, just swing by and see it!

When "mere" engine mounts are prettier than whole cars…

One Ferrari-in-a-914 engine cradle kit. Some machining and welding required.

Today Martin and I went to another buddy's shop to borrow his lathe and mill.
First was the lathe, to face both ends of the bungs, then measure and trim them to final length.

Next, it was into the mill with the cradle tubes to cut the... wait for it... bung hole!

Nothing like having the proper tools available. Super nice result!
The outer edges of that excess material will be trimmed back and the remaining will be wrapped around the bung ahead of welding.

Looking forward to some new pictures on this after 2 weeks of no World.

You'd think I'd have made a ton of progress in the past couple weeks. Well, if you count design changes, I did!

Remember, this cradle will be attached to the drivetrain and the entire set up then offered up to the chassis. So, after seeing the "vertical tabs" model mocked into the chassis, I realized the odds of being able to get all of the mounting bungs to slip into those slots, at the same time, at the necessary angle, on my contraption jack set up would be, um, "low".

Why don't I think these things through on paper before I make parts?

Look at the how things mount in the 914. In the 911. All the mounts are horizontally oriented. I am such a doofus sometimes. OK, many times...

The good news is all I had to do was rotate the cradle tubes 90 degrees, update the fire wall tab system to account for a horizontal orientation and cut the new parts. With that done I could fixture up the cradle tubes and get things tacked.

Here are a few pics of the fixture set up being used to build each cradle side, then to position the cross bar. Again, having this table is like cheating.

And here's the horizontal tab set. One thing I did account for is that the fire wall isn't necessarily 90 degress to the chassis. To account for that, I used a tab/slot approach with the tabs and mounting plates so that once the tabs are tight against the fire wall and the cradle is mocked into position, the mounting plates have enough slop that they can rotate to their "happy place" within the tabs and self-locate to the exact position needed.
See? Sometimes I'm all over a good approach!

Note, too, that I went after the edges of the mounting tabs with my little metal router. It makes for a really nicely finished part.

Cradle mocked in place, successfully demonstrating that all the measuring was accurate. I have the needed clearance at the alternator and the cross bar sits just where I wanted it, with plenty of clearance to the drivetrain.

Next, it was on to the engine mount brackets. Here's the current design.

What's neat is that you can cut the holes with a bit over 180 degrees remaining and "snap" the piece over the tube. It really helps simplify mocking it into position as it pretty much holds itself in place.
There will be one of these plates on each side of the mount with a vertical plate between them.

Note that I routered the opening but didn't yet get to the outside edges.