Finished up the wooden mockup this week. Believe it or not, a std household copper pipe is the same size as a dowel pin, so this was easy to set up. This allowed the trans to be mounted to the buck motor. The motor mounts were set up, along with the exhaust, oil filter adapter (OFA) and the intake manifold. This allows everything to be mounted on the stock k-member for now. Starting to look like a real setup now, aside from the wood

. Next step it make up mounts for the chassis fixture to get the engine and trans at the correct position and angle.
Finally started work on the underbody once again. Since the 315 or 335 tires will not clear the inner wheel wells, we needed to make some more room. The suspension will also move differently than a solid axle (you get camber change now with the IRS), so that further defines the need to minitub the rear of the car. Since there is no kit available (may be a while before DSE makes a Torino kit) - we need to just cut out an inch of floorpan and add an inch to the inner wheel wells. Finally got to put the plasma cutter to its first test - is worth its weight on gold during this step. It is very easy to cut straight lines this way too.
Had to cut holes in the trunk floor so the upper control arms on the IRS would fit. Also hitting the pinion snubber and will hit the jounce bumper brackets, so those will have to go away too. This all needs to be done so the car can have a lower stance and still sit at the correct "design" position as it was designed (and not just at some arbitrary control arm angle).
Also have a complete 3ds Max model to post up here within the next week to get some feedback on the final design for the cars.