I can't wait to see the hemi in their

 

Ok, so far today I've unbolted the drivers side exhaust, got all but two bolts on the bell housing off, thanks to Hendrixx or it would be 4. Got the intake, starter, and structural cover off. I just need to get the passenger side exhaust off, the other two bell housing bolts, hand crank the motor to reach all the torque converter bolts, and then I can remove the hood and attach the ceiling hoist, take the motor mounts off and pull the motor! Piece of cake...

 

So I made a lot of progress. It's all ahead full at this point. I decided to use my ceiling hoist for the whole swap, it sure does save time from having to borrow a cherry picker. It's not perfect but for $30 and some drywall dust in the eye, it can't be beat. Here's the pics I promised.

A nice rear shot after a good wash and wax.
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A nice front shot, with my newly painted and moderfied grille.

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Engine bay this morning.




She's ready to go!

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Here's our half moon y-pipe, that's pretty restrictive. hello backpressure.



Picture of the structural cover removed, the flywheel with the torque converter behind it.



The inside of our cats.



The old schtuff.



Random closeup of my grille



Ready to move to the hoist

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And it's up!

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Torque converter and bellhousing

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My Magnum powered wheel barrel.

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A motorless dak.

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That's a familiar picture hahah good luck glad the engine came out okay

 

this is sweet. grill looks good too! I would do anything to get that y pipe out of there..damn. The cats look kind of restrictive/clogged as well

 

Thanks! The grille was spur of the moment, I was bored and thought I'd do that instead of starting the swap. It was only on there for 3 days before I parked the truck. The cats actually arent that bad. The pattern is just a bit tighter than the magnaflow highflows I got, with around the same surface area. Much better than the 3 cat setups on the LA magnums.

I didn't get much done today, just washed the engine bay and started a parts list. I forgot the get the bolts that attach the 4x4 isolators to the engine mount brackets or I would have tried a test fit today to see what I needed to do with the drivers side mount. As it stands, the passenger side mount will bolt right up. I just had to drill one hole for the 3rd bolt! It won't have all 4 bolts attached, but 3 is fine, infact the stock passenger side 2wd mounts only used 3 bolts lol.

 

Subscribed to this. I already read through the first parts. Glad to see it's finally taking shape. And you gotta explain how you did the grill.

 

Thanks for the interest man!

The grille was a pain. It was chrome originally so I sanded the crap out of it. Chrome is a very hard metal, takes a lot of man handling to even scratch it. I used a palm sander for the flat parts and hand sanded all the curves I couldn't get to.

The vent parts are made of expanded metal. Home depot carries two sizes of it, one with bigger holes than that. They keep it with the angle iron and allthread display.

I clipped off most of the tabs on the back of the grille after picking some that would stay to help line two sections of mesh up symmetrically. The mesh I sanded as well after I spent a couple hours trimming it with a set of dykes.

Cleaned both parts and used a self etching primer on them. I painted the mesh with rubberized undercoating and the grille with a super dark gray metallic from duplicolor. I then used 2 duplicolor cans of clearcoat and I still don't think it was enough, I miss my two stage clear from imatchpaint.com.

I didn't clearcoat the mesh, since I wanted to keep a flat color. I painted all the parts separately and let them dry a day before installing on the truck. Only time will tell if it's durable enough.

 

So, what are we looking at 1 & 1/2 year plan, or 2 year plan?

Glad to see it's finally underway. It's gonna be awesome.

 

Maybe change the thread title lol. I must have it done before winter, hopefully before race season is over. But, with motor mounts being the only real issue, time is aplenty and we only need the one car for now.

I'll have motor mounts figured out this week, probably not made but certainly figured out. The other big one is fuel line. Those two things are the only issues that will slow me down. Everything else should be straight forward. Just tedious.