8/7/08 Cobra Update - Motor is In!
SEATTLE - On Friday, July 25th I caught a ride home from work with Karen and, on the way, we stopped and picked up a motor hoist from Aurora Rents. Then, later that night the engine was transformed from this:
To this:

Which is where it stayed for a while until I realized the dowel pins on the flywheel to align the clutch pressure plate were installed by the engine machine shop in the wrong holes. After digging out the pneumatic torque gun to get the flywheel bolts out, I was able to drive out the pins and tap them into the proper holes (there's probably a moral to this story somewhere....). The clutch and pressure plates then installed easily, as did the bell housing and clutch-fork/throwout bearing.
Getting the tranny installed the next morning also was bit fiddly. Karen & I dad some real problems getting everything lined up until it clicked to use dowels to help line things up (er...like the manual suggests). Once snugging the transmission to the bell housing, and hoisting the whole mess up, things looked like this:

Then, with Karen helping, we moved the motor into position in front of the car. She guided the back end of the transmission, while I hoisted, and shoved, being very aware of the high center of gravity of the hoist -- we didn't want this thing dumping over.... Pretty soon we it looked like this:

Then, again, things got fiddly. The right engine mount needs to drop in first, then the left side has a slot the bolt slides into. The problem was, every time we got the right side lined up, the left side was just a little bit off. Finally with a little prying (see the boards above?), it all dropped into place.
Here's what it looks like now - with the added benefit of seeing it through the lens of our new Canon A590 camera (we never found our old one, but now that we have a replacement, I'm sure it'll show up soon...):

Then, this past weekend, I spend way too many hours fabricating an aluminum bracket so the coil could mount to the 3/4" square tube in front of the master cylinder reservoir. Oh, and I mounted the MSD ignition box to the driver's side F-panel.
And that's about where we're at. Next steps include hooking up all the plumbing and wiring. We're not going to worry about the final routing and looming yet -- first we need to make sure the thing fires and runs. Once it runs we re-route and clean everything up.
Thanks for reading!
--Joe
This Page:
http://garage.caropepe.com/home/ffr_cobra_project/FFR_Build_Diary/2008-08-07_update-motor_is_in.html
Build Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/caropepe/tags/mybuild
