The Next Day
So now it's Saturday morning in our story.
After contemplating what I was going to do about the trans mounts over night, since I discovered that there is a physics issue with the transmission and the car itself, only one object can occupy the same space at a time. The trans is just freaking HUGE, compared to the old trans. I decided the night before to cut out the old mounts and make new, since I didn't really have a choice, and even trimming the old ones wouldn't have been enough. If I wanted to leave the engine and trans more forward I could have made it work, but that just wasn't an option to me.
I get the grinder with a cutting disc out and start cutting away the driver side mount.
Point of no return:
I spent most of the day designing and fabricating the new mounts.
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
I then moved onto boxing the old mount brace and then tying the new mounts to the old mount brace.
New mounts tied to old mount brace:
Notice that the right side tie in plate has a notch, yeah, that's to clear the VSS, and if I hadn't put that notch there, the trans would not have fit. It's THAT close to the brace. I'm contemplating notching that brace a little more to give a little more clearance, just for peace of mind.
More lift and support
Happy with how the trans mount has turned out, I move onto the front mount. Now here is where I break from conventional wisdom in a typical longitudinal layout. Most people would make some plates that attach to the side of the engine block and then tie them into the existing mount pads, or a new crossmember. Not me, nope, I'm going a different route.
Go back to how the LX9 is mounted in a transverse application. There is a mount attached to the oil pan, just below the crank pulley. I like this idea because I can remove the mount pedestals from the crossmember and open that area up for other things.
I had planned for this weeks ago and bought a universal Energy Suspension mount that looked like it should work. I had fabricated the plate that attaches to the oil pan a few weeks ago, in preparation. Now to finish it off and make something to attach it to the car...
Some time later:
Comparison of modified crossmember to original crossmember (With steering and lower A-arms still attached):
And the engine supported by the car.
Tomorrow I will be making some struts to keep the engine upright, since I only have the two mounts holding the driveline right now.
Here's that Tight VSS clearance.
Here is a picture of the engine to trans adapter I made, remember this is the second one, the first one will become wall art, to remind me to make proper measurements and calculations. lol
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