Ordered my Rod & Custom front cross member...

Yeah, $140/ea for engine mounts is a bit pricey. GM clamshell inserts are about $25/ea.

So, the frame mount pad is getting a little drill work done. I probably should have just told them that in the first place. Oh well...

 

Uh oh.. That cross member does not look a think like the one I ordered from full tilt. Is there a diffrence between their Modular engine cross member and say what you would use for a 351w? I sure hope so..

 

Got some good work done on Saturday. Getting the old frame stands off the car was a PITA! I ran out of cutting wheels on the passenger side and had to drill, grind, chisel off the frame stands. Blah! No fun. I've done that before on other cars too, and now I remember why I bought my angle grinder.

Any who... when I was cutting the pinch welded frame sections off, to clear the cross member brackets, I ended up with some places where I broke all the way through. So, I'll weld those back up before welding in the cross member. Lots of welding in my future...

I also used my twisted wire wheel to clean off the majority of the ugly on the frame rails. I also have a wire cup that I'll use to get into the more pitted areas.

More pics to follow!

 

Pics, as promised.











Ran out of cutting wheels, time, and energy, so I didn't finish off the passenger side.

 

What kind of engine mounts are you talking about that cost $140 ea? If you dont care about vibration you could use some solid engine mounts that are like $50-70 for the set. I priced some polyurethane mounts and they werent that much. IM using a stock style mount on mine.

Its funny that R&C helped you and were so nice to you about putting a DOHC 4.6 in your car. Cause about a year ago when I contacted him about mounts he basically told me putting that engine in a Maverick was impossible and that I was an idiot for even trying and got pretty nasty about it. I sent him some pics of the engine sitting in the Mav and that pretty much shut him up. And now.....they offer these nice new motor mounts....go figure!

I was looking at your pics and If I can suggest one thing. Since you removed the entire engine bay and only have the frame stubs left. Tack in some cross braces before you weld that subframe in. Those frames are not that thick and I would be worried about some distortion with all the factory bracing gone.

 

I have the subframe connectors and cage welded in, so I don't think those frame sections are going anywhere even though they're kind of catilevered right now. The car is also supported all along the side sills, so there isn't much stress on anything that would cause it to twist up. The biggest issue I'm having right now is that the front end is so light the car is trying to tip to the back, hence the tires sitting where the engine should be.

I plan to run bars from the cage to the frame once I get the cross member and engine mocked up. I'd hate to weld in bars only to have them be in the way of headers or suspension parts later.

I'll definitely measure the frame to make sure it's not twisting though.

The engine mounts I was looking at are on Jegs. The fully enclosed poly block mounts are $140 each from Energy Suspension. These are the types of mounts I would need for the pads that are welded to the cross member.


Like I said though, I have the chevy clam shells and I think there are even some brand new poly inserts hanging out somewhere. It's easy enough to drill 4 holes to mount the clam shells to the cross member, and then it's a matter of getting the engine brackets to bolt to the 4.6. Not the worst thing in the world to do.

I do not want to do solid mounts. This will not be a race car.

 

Yeah if you got the cage and subframe connectors already in you should be good to go.

Here are the mounts I was talking about. These are urethane units from AmericanMuscle.com they are $109.00 for the pair! ALOT cheaper than the energy suspension ones. Just an option in case you dont want to do the extra fab work. I will be using these.


What are you using for wiring? The factory harness or an aftermarket harness? Cant wait to see the progress! I'll post more pics of mine in the coming weeks. Just had a baby boy Saturday so much wont get done for a bit.

 

Wow! Congratulations!! We have a little girl coming in April, so I've got some time until then.

Thanks for the link on the engine mounts. Right now I've got more time than money so I will still probably end up making my own engine mounts.

I have the stock Mark VIII harness and EEC. However, I think I'm going to use a Mega Squirt to control everything through the stock harness. Maybe not though. Since this is a COP ignition it doesn't play well with the Mega Squirt ignition driver. Some people have luck with using the EDIS-8 to drive the COP, so I dunno.

The rest of the chassis wiring will be done with an aftermarket fuse block and switches. Probably a Painless harness.

 

the new meagsauirt 3 that is in the second phase of beta testing handles coil on plug systems. you should look into that.

 

That was the reason that I installed my front cage down tubes from the firewall to the front of the frame before I removed all of my shock towers. I was worried where those rails might wind up with all of the bracing gone.

 

Most Mustang II crossmembers are the same - just built for the width of a specific frame rail - Wider or narrower. That is the first one that I have seen notched out for a specific engine in mind.

 

Sweet action. Right around the time that I get this heap plumbed up and ready to fire, mega squirt should have all the bugs worked out.

I knew those guys would come through for me.

My long term goal is to get this engine running on a closed loop wideband O2 system so I don't have to run a MAF.

 

This crossmember also takes into account mounting points for the A-arms on the cross member to keep the track the same as stock, and to keep it from bump steering.

 

Nice pics Mav1970!!! My car shares a tiny garage with a motorcylce too! It looks like you keep your place cleaner than I do mine though...

 

That's the only clean spot in the garage.

I was so proud of it, I took a photo of it.