Marriage

This is the part they usually call the "marriage". When the engine and the chassis come together for the first time. My engine on the way back into the 'Cuda! Everything worked out really smooth, no dents and dings in the new engine-bay. We decided to mount the engine and the trans seperately as opposed to bolting them together and squeezing them both in at the same time.

A skateboard was very useful while installing the transmission, I borrowed a jack with a very narrow front end from Phil, (hope he has no objections) to lift the tranny under the car while still on the skateboard.

Engine mounted, complete with the transmission

Prepping the engine

Jackie helped with prepping the engine prior to installation. On the driver-side the enginemount is installed together with the dipstick-tube. What you can't see is that the temperature in the shop was down to two degrees celceus while we worked, up a bit from the eight below outside...

The small bracket in front of the engine mount is made for a special torque rod to keep the engine from twisting too much during acceleration - should be easier on the stock engine mounts that way.

Passenger-side engine moung installed.

Inside pads

I started to install some anti-vibration material on the floorboards. I decided against the full dynamat type of padding in favor of a more stock looking material. I thereby also hope to keep moisture out or the car, since there is no air in the crevaces of the floorboards under the padding, where a change of temperature could cause moisture.
I cut out the holes for the bodyplugs and will install those later.

Anoter piece of insulation goes under the dash. I bought it as an original repalcement mat, that looks somewhat like it's made of compressed old rags. This is one of those pieces that won't be seen later, but hopefully will add to the overall quality of the car by keeping noise and rattles away. It took me a while to figure out where exatly the padding is to be located - only after I took out the original piece, that I had luckily not thrown away yet, was I able to install the pad correctly.

The next step is to install the heaterbox...

Heaterbox

Finshed cleaning and restoring the heaterbox. All the metal parts were taken out, the rust removed and painted, all the foam was replaced and all the rest was cleaned up. I will see if I can also replace the vacuum lines. they dont't look bad but just in case...

One of the screws that secures the heaterbox to the firewall broke off, so I'll have to fix that somehow, other than that, it's ready to be built in.

I had to assemble some or the parts several times, as I did not recall the exact order in which they came apart...you can never take too many pictures...

The engine is back

Jackie brought the engine back to the shop after a complete makeover. It was difficult to budge into the back of his new Galaxy Minivan. Of course we had to use a crane since the bigblock weighs more than 250 kilogramms. That is without the exhaust maifolds, waterpump, starter, carb and a few other add-ons.
A few of those parts will still need to be mounted on the block before it can be squezed into the engine bay - there's not much room to move afterwards.

Have a seat

I test-fitted the passenger bucket seat for a little extra motivation. Will have to go back out of course, as no sound insulation or carpet is installed yet but I thought I'd take a look anyway. And have a place to rest when working :-)

The rear bench is in place as well, mostly becaus I got tired of carrying it from one shelf to another all the time among all the bits and pieces I have ready for the car.

Finally I also have the seat tracks for both front seats sorted out and working fine.

Rolling up and down

As you can tell by the slow work on this blog, I have not gotten around to wrenching very much lately. Work and family business has been keeping me occupied more than neccesary but a few days ago I got back into the shop for some quality time again.


I had been reluctant to attack the quarter windows because I could still remember the sore knuckles from taking them out. Surprisingly putting everything back together was not half as bad, I was able to squeze everything in the narrow slot between the inner and outer quarters.

Both sides are now in place, rolling up and down without effort.
The windows are still a little shaky but I suppose that will get better with all the weather sealing in place after paint.

All the internals have been cleaned, some of the lower part of the drivers side mechanism even had to be fabricated new, as there was quite a bit of rust on this spot.