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Some mounting bungs were also machined for the transmission crossmember, and then those were tacked to the frame for a proper crossmember mount.
The holes were drilled in the square tubular front subframe to mount the weld-in bungs. More structure is going to tie all of the subframe together at a later day, and it won't be left "open ended" like this.
A look from underneath shows the mounting bungs tack welded in place and the new Woodward steering rack finally mounted to the chassis. From here it was time to make the steering shaft, or at least mock-up most of it, before header tubes were snaked around that.
Another one of Brad's "glamour shots" of the rack mounted in place. I've never seen a steering rack that looked so damned good. Weird.
I snapped a quick and ugly shot here to show that the valve covers were installed an an ignition coil and spark plug wire were in place. This coil and plug wire was moved from port to port to make sure each primary tube gave clearance for the plug wire.
CUSTOM EXHAUST HEADERS - LEFT BANK
Now that the steering rack was in place, and the steering shaft built (and attached at one end) and mocked in place, the driver's side exhaust header could be laid out and built.
Back to the Ice Engine Works kit, which was mocked-up up on the exhaust flange. Several iterations of each primary tube could be quickly tested before cutting any metal.
Once the routing looked good in plastic each Ice tube model can be removed and replicated in stainless steel bends. Lots of time but its worth it for one-off or prototype header development.
Snaking around the steering shaft is always tricky, so the driver's side header on LHD cars usually takes a bit more time. The steering shaft is a 2-piece collapsing design using stainless 3/4" DD inner bar that slides inside 1" hollow DD tubing, with Flaming River needle bearing U-joints at both ends.
At this point all of the ignition coils and plug wires were attached to verify primary room and most of the tubing layout is complete. In the image below you can see the convoluted design of the transmission crossmember, which is necessary due to the very low mounting height of the engine (dry sump oil pan) and transmission, flat bottom nature of the floorpan, and the need to tuck two 3" main exhaust pipes above the floor.
The starter is in place here and you can see how the collectors come back into the custom transmission tunnel. The driver's side was the constraint on primary length, as the external shifter has levers and rods that reduce clearance on that side. The shortest primary is about 26" long, which will is appropriate for this motor, and still considered full length.
RADIATOR MOUNTING
To check hood and sheet metal clearances the entire front end was installed again.
The customer brought us a custom C&R Radiator made to bolt into a 69 Camaro. It was a beautiful 2-pass heat exchanger that had an integral oil cooler and power steering cooler and included a plastic fan shroud . This would be a great package for a street driven car, but this is more of a track beast.
The other problem is the C&R that the owner provided (above left) was too wide to fit the frame rail width on the new custom frame. The width of the new frame was dictated by other factors (wheel size/offset, C6 spindles, C6 control arms, camber range needed) so this nice C&R radiator would have to be changed. We used the Griffin (above right) stock car style radiator that would soon go into my C4 Corvette (Project
#DangerZone) as a mock-up for the 69 Camaro.
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