I'm getting my wheel stash out so I can check for the wides and look for possible clearance issues in the next few days. After that the body comes off and we mount the motor and check its fit.
Thanks! I was hoping for no modifications but I already pushed the borders of engineering doctorate on a few places and I figure if you don't have tin snips to make these mods you shouldn't be swapping your own suspension much less welding your own frame.
Alright, we got her on the ground. I need to adjust the shocks a little and these tires are different sizes from the other side so its sitting a little odd but close enough for photos.
Tires! So a 245 with an 8.5 inch wheel is going to be the easiest thing to put under the truck without modifying the bed. Room is just tight under there. Now, you can see in the previous photos that the frame is designed to accommodate a lot of tire should you be willing to make the simple modification. Up front is amazing. A 275 on a 10.5" tire will fit easily and turn so you guys who want to see on of these babies handle, a 11" with a 295 should be cake with a little work to the outer fender and exact sizing to steer and stop the beast.
Miles and mile and miles of room under here!!! We're pulling the cab back off to mount up a 5.3L and see what the firewall clearance looks like.
Tires all fall nicely in their exact places. The gray wheels are 18" and the chrome are 17" to give you an idea of size. Some taller tires on the back would be a good look to the truck as well.
So here a some of the final mods I've made to the frame for the production batch. I'm happy that I'm only going to raise the front cradle a little bit in the production batch to get the suspension angle perfect. It will be more critical on the lower body height.
The rest are just opening up tolerances to accommodate for welding deflection in a few of the ears and the additional thickness of powder coating I didn't think about when I was designing.
Finally I replaced these gussets with tubing parts so we can cut the total assembly down by 12 parts and 20+ inches of welding.
Got the LM7 mounted up and we have MILES AND MILES of room!!!!
We have plenty of room up here with small electric fans but we also have a lot of room behind the motor to move it back for bigger fans or longer pulleys. These are the OEM truck Pulley and are the longest OEM LS pulleys but a forward mount system will need more room. We also have plenty of room to clear a distributor for SBC guys.
Tons of room for headers, steering is going to be cake (the cake is no lie), We even have plenty of transmission room with the high body height on this 4L60E and will only need a little modification on a 4L80E or T56. You can see we're even using the stock tall oil pan and we still have room to move the motor down a bit more if we need more room.
Set up looks good on the truck and chassis. One question though...
In the picture of the oil pan in relation to the front crossmember, it looks like the tailshaft of the trans could come down to level out the bottom of the engine oil pan. Would that help the trans/floor pan clearence without hurting driveline angles?
__________________ Karl
1965 Chevrolet C10
1982 Chevrolet C10 - My son's Truck - Sunburn
Set up looks good on the truck and chassis. One question though...
In the picture of the oil pan in relation to the front crossmember, it looks like the tail shaft of the trans could come down to level out the bottom of the engine oil pan. Would that help the trans/floor pan clearance without hurting driveline angles?
Good eye, I didn't feel like bolting the cross member in so its sitting on top of the bracket instead of under it. That's .500" down on the transmission mount. The pan angle is more because the trucks have live axles and are high off the ground so they tilt the motor back quite a bit to keep the drive line angle correct. Getting the pan flat is possible but not as important for this one. We would like lots of clearance for the guys who run the low body stance and don't want to knock holes in their pan but if you wanted to you could space the transmission crossmember down quite easily or just flip it and lower the motor .750" down.
So if you didn't want to mod the floor you've got room to go down but on say a t56 where the shifters position is almost as important a choice for the drive train placement then you can come up and do a little modification.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
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