basically a rolling shell, has torana rack and pinion steering and a cut down borg warner in the bum, i had a v6 and 5 speed which i put into it but Marie wants to put a v8 in it, she said chev, i said she would be better off with a 304 ... and eventually i convinced her
So Marie keeps deciding its better to spend money on shoes and handbags and shit like that ... so i thought stuff this im going to get the ball rolling myself - So for christmas 2009 i bought her a V8
It was an ebay special, looked like a good bargain, only problem was that it was about 7-8 hours up the coast, luckily Jayme came to the rescue and collected it for them then stored it at his place till we were able to make the trek up the coast to his place to get it.
So this was how he recieved it, i knew it was all in pieces, i didn't know there was so many extras with it though like tailshaft, k frames and radiator etc.
So once we got it home i had a good look over everything to try and work out what was what and anything that was missing etc. Really other than some bolts and little things like starter motor its all there so thats a bonus.
A few added bonuses was the C.O.M.E. memcal with V8 knock filter board and the heads are ported a bit. looks to have some sort of high stall torque converter too so for $550 it was a complete bargain i reckon.
So i roughly screwed the engine together to allow us to trial fit it so we could start working out engine mounts and such.
the commodore mounts make the engine sit way too far forwards
So we sourced some HQ type mounts and they are alot better, they sit about as close to the oil pump as we are going to get, so with them it will mean minimal modifications to the crossmember engine mounts to get it all lined up (we need to move them back about 40-50mm)
you can see here there is a 50mm pipe supporting the back of the engine, with it removed we'll have the engine back about 40mm
The next on the cards after the engine mounts are sorted is to get a HQ sump and pickup, and work out a gearbox crossmember and then we'll pull the motor, throw a gasket set at it and a light hone of the bores (to remove rust etc) then slap it together. The plan is to use the current components along with an old stock cam from my mates motor and then get it all running etc, finish off the rest of the car and then once its engineered/regoed we'll pull the motor out and give it a proper reco. i just don't want to reco it now and then have the thing in and out of the shed for the next 5 years never getting run in properly!!
She might be a bit smokey or tappety but it'll be fine for what we need.
Will also allow me to get a decent tune into it, then once its rebuilt we should have a good baseline to work from!
