After pulling the engine, I’ve been consumed with getting the engine bay into shape and with fitting the new engine into place, albeit, temporarily.
Some welding, sawing and drilling was in order. First, there was some major rust around the shock towers to address. I hired a local technician to do my work as I don’t have a welder and given the cost, it wouldn’t have made any kind of sense to purchase one for this project. He came by on an afternoon, cut some custom patches for my shock towers, and sewed them into place.
During most of the work with the engine bay, the brake lines have been in the way almost entirely. If there had been some simple way to remove them I would have done that — I find myself wiring them out of the way a lot as a lot of operations involve moving objects in or relative to their space.
I’ve taken the liberty of removing almost everything else — all of the components of the engine bay have been cleared out, in preparation for the new engine. Some things go right back where they were, but almost everything else must move to a new location or be discarded. The brake master cylinder stays where it was, for example, and the fuse box will be in a similar location, as well as the air conditioning lines and canister.
Probably the most troublesome component to fit is the air box — it’s bulky, and simply doesn’t look like it’s going to behave when you first attempt to stick it in there. After looking at several other people’s attempts at this, I chose the location you see in the video.
I’ll be documenting the holes I’m cutting for the curious.
Next up — I’m pulling the engine for the last time — I’ll be cleaning up the holes I’ve cut, making some brackets and prepping the metal (Por15, a rust treatment, and painting a lot of surfaces). After that, the true build begins!
Talk soon!
-=FeriCyde=-