Date: 11-23-22
Today was another big day. I hauled all of the parts that were needed to install the transmission to Vic's house. We started around 10am and made excellent progress.
This is a billet steel SFI approved flex plate from Circle D. It looks amazing and has 6 converter bolts to match the Circle D billet triple disk converter.
It is nice working with a clean block and a new crank. Just to make sure everything was good, I hand threaded the ARP flex plate bolts into the crank before doing anything else.
The flex plate went on without any drama and was torqued to 75lb/ft using blue Loctite. The flex plate locking tool came in handy for this task to keep the crank from rotating.
After installing the converter into the transmission (not sure why I didn't get a picture), it was time to wrestle this beast of a transmission under the car. We had some jack stands under the rear axle and jack stands under the front frame horns to get the car high enough.
It was easy enough to get a jack under the tailshaft housing, but getting the front of the transmission up was the big challenge. I suggested using the engine hoist and attaching a strap to two bolts in the transmission case. This worked great! We got the transmission high enough to slip a transmission jack under the pan for extra safety, then slowly working it up until the transmission slipped on to the dowel pins.
There was about a .130" gap between the converter and the flex plate, which is perfect. You can see that the pan is basically level with the frame.
We followed the instructions that came with the Holley transmission crossmember, but had a little trouble with the transmission mount that I got. I got an Energy Suspension poly mount, which is not what is specified in the instructions (should have read them before buying it). After a little searching around on Rockauto, we got a part number for a 70 GTO TH400 mount, Anchor PN 2378. The local parts store had one in stock and it ended up being about 1/2" shorter than the Energy Suspension mount. This allowed the crossmember to slip under the transmission easily, with about 3/8" of clearance.
The left side of the crossmember slips over the frame rail, while the right side (shown here) has a separate pad that slips over the frame rail and the crossmember sits on top. This makes for a really solid installation.
Part of the reason I ever started this project was to redo the engine and transmission mounts and use a better fitting oil pan. I can't say enough about how well the Holley swap components are engineered to work together and how well everything fit together. In this day and age, it is hard to find parts that don't need some sort of modification to work as intended. We didn't have to modify anything!
Now that the engine and transmission are in their place, the fun stuff can start...
Andrew