What about at full articulation?

 

I've got to cycle the axle once more to make sure everything clears. But the last time I cycled it it all cleared.

 

I think I would bolt as much of it together as possible, to avoid problems with engine removal/installation later......

 

I need to finish mocking it all up and bolt yhings together like they would be and see how it looks.

 

WOW it's been a rough 10-14 days let me tell you. My daughter & I both were sick and she was having cramps so bad we ended up going to the doctors. Don't know what we'd eaten but both of us got food poisoning some how. Of course we'd both thought we'd gotten the COVID but after tests it wasn't. So neither of us had much desire to do much of any thing.

My birthday was last Monday and my daughter got me a really KEWL Neon Sign. Now I just got to figure out if I want to hang it in the house or out in the garage.









So today was my first day back out in the garage and I worked on making the brackets for the engine/transmission skid plate. It always seems to take a LOT longer to drill holes that what I think it's gunna. All the pieces will be bolted on.









I've got 5 more holes to drill tomorrow.




Because the motor mounts are at an angle I need to make a tab that the brackets can bolt to. The plan is to weld them on next to the motor mounts and tie them into the MM.






I've got to get all this welded onto the frame now since once the engine is set in place there wouldn't be enough room to work on this.




Sunday night Mother Nature decided that she would play a trick on us with a storm that blew thru and dumped a nice dusting. It's all gone other than snow in the shade. It's suppose to be in the high 50* or low 60* later this week.

 

Happy belated birthday Rick. Glad you both are on the mend. There's been a nasty stomach bug around this area that sounds similar to what you had. It doesn't look like fun.

I think I'd hang the sign where I spend the most time, which would be the house, just because it's cool to look at.

Rest of the build is looking great. Drilling holes is tedious work, but brings a lot of satisfaction when everything bolts together easy.

 

Indeed. Happy Belated Birthday.

 

Happy birthday!!!!!!!

 

I finally got all the holes drilled into the plates so I could make my brackets for the transmission/skid plate.





Then I welded some nuts to the back of the shorter plates. This will be my nut backer plate that the brackets I'm building will attach to.





With that finished I then started to work on the brackets that will attach to the nut plates and the arm from the skid plate. So I used the arms as my template to make the brackets with. I'd cut a bunch of little spacers and they helped out a lot.




















My first idea was to somehow attach the nut plates to the motor mounts but I really wasn't sure yet ho to do this.

 

I was messing around with the brackets I'd made that will bolt to the nut plates and noticed that the end where it bolts to the plate would compress and bend that brackets. So I welded in a shim to keep them for being compresses.










They turned out okay and serve their purpose. .






Then after looking at how I want to mount the nut plates to the motor mounts I figured out I'd use some of the 1/4x1" flat stock and a way to mount them.




Since the motor mounts are tapered I needed to make the top farther out than the bottoms. Done and not bad IMHO.




Bolted the brackets to the nut plates just to make sure of fitment.




Drivers Side













Passenger Side