Naked at home

With the Fury safely returned from Sandown I stripped all the body work off and dumped it in the bus until further notice, the bus seems to be turning into a glorified storage container at the moment! I'll start to worry when Dad puts the lawn mower in there!!

As the engine needs to be mounted no lower than the chassis (so does not compromise ride height or be the first thing to hit the kerb during an "off track" moment) we clamped a board in place to rest the engine on while making the mounts. The round hole is so that the weld on the sump for the water pump leak outlet pipe that passes through the sump.

Modified sump from Andy fitted, you can see the water overflow pipe at the bottom.

With the engine sitting flat on the sump plate we started to work out where the mounts are going exactly. We have decided that a full cradle is not practical and would be very complicated, so the idea is to use 2 aluminium plates hanging the engine from the 4 main mounting points on the rear (righthand side of car) of the engine, and then 2 stabilising bars from the top 2 lugs on the head. In order to hang the aluminium brackets the chassis required a new member running from the footwell to the front rearward cross member. Initially this  cross member was a weedy piece of 1/2" box section and was a contributing factor to the chassis snapping back last August at Silverstone, but during the front end rebuild last winter it was replaced and is extremly strong,made from 2.5mm walled box section as it is the main stay for the front lower suspension pickups (and we ordered the wrong stuff!!). Although i never intended to use this cross member to mount an engine when i installed it, it has worked out very handy!

The overhanging box section that covers the access hole to the pedal box will be removed once the mounting lugs for the plate have been positioned

You may wonder why i have bolted it in rather than welding it in place, there is a good reason for this..... Whilst coming up with the plans it occurred to me that i can make the mount on this side as an assembly that will be bolted to the engine as a sort of cradle. The aluminium plates will bolt to the engine and this steel member will bolt to the aluminium plates, the engine can then be lowered into place and the 4 bolts on the member fitted. There will obviously be another 2 bolts holding the bottom of the aluminium plates to the lower chassis rails. Hopefully this will make more sense when you look at the pictures below....

With the engine in place we needed to stop it moving about, so I knocked up a quick "restraining system", don't worry they will not be in the final design!!

With the engine held in place i made up some cardboard templates, then transferred them onto 8mm mdf (8mm 6082 T6 plate will be used for the real plates)

A few trail fits and some "smoothing" off and they dropped into place and could be bolted up to the engine.

Next job is to remove the engine and check the plates fully clear everything on the engine and remove the non necessary areas. I'll probably then remake the templates to include the mounting points for the lugs that will be fitted to the chassis and new member. I'll then transfer the design into CAD to tart up the radius's (whats the plural of radius??) and add some fancy holes etc. I'll the send it off for waterjet cutting.

Dad has also been busy with the reverse again, its now all mounted up to a dummy MDF plate (which will again be replaced with 6082 T6), and some lightening holes drilled out of the flange.