Welding in the Engine Mounts

Now that the transmission was in there, it was time to line up the engine (yet another dry fit) so that I can determine how to make the engine mounts, and where to put them. I did have the brief revelation that I should put the front driveshaft in, and that ended up saving me a lot of heartache later.

After the engine was in place, I realized that I did not want to do anything wrong with the mounts, so I did some research. I found out that Novak Conversions makes an excellent Ford 302 mount to put the V-8 into Jeeps with 26" frames, and my IIA frame was 25.5" across - perfect! I purchased the MM30 mounts, and when they arrived, I was over the moon! They are really massive and sturdy, so there is little chance that I will botch the job of making mounts that are too flimsy.

I did have to do a bit of modification to the brackets because of the centering of my engine, but it was no major drama. It is a nice kit because none of the holes are pre-drilled, so you can perfectly customize it for your engine.

The toughest part (as always) is the measuring and fitting - I wanted to make sure that the mounts were dead-on level, as well as ensuring the engine had the 5 degrees nose-up as specified in all the manuals. So, I must have spent an entire day getting it all tight, and I found that if you spray the edges of the chassis and mounts in primer, then you can easily make alignment marks. Then you can un-clamp the mounts, and drill and paint them, then put them back in the EXACT same spots.

It was a bit of a pain to squeeze back into the engine bay to weld, and I did get a spark on the naughty bits that made me do a dance for a while. But everything turned out well, and with a splash of paint it looks really smart. We will test my math soon enough!

In goes the engine!!!
created and maintained by Matt Atkins
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