The heart of the beast is finally in place. A Blueprint Engine 347 based on a 302 SBF. The engine was tested to be 410.3 HP and 427.1 lb.-ft. or torque. The engine is mated to a Tremec TKX 5-speed manual transmission with a hydraulic clutch. Below are the dyno results:
It took four of us about 3 hours to get it in, including prep time and a lot of jostling. The fit was quite tight!
The most vexing problem was getting the locating pins on the engine mount to pop into the alignment slot on the chassis. The the pin was ~ 1/8” askew and it took a lot of ‘wiggling’ the engine to get the mount to drop into position on the chassis. But, once the mating was done, the engine sat symmetrical on the mounting plates, side-to-side, and the transmission was aligned nearly perfectly with the mounting holes on the transmission mount A-frame.
A relatively minor problem is that the TKX transmissions about 1/2” too long to drop into the A-frame:
Shown above is the modified A-frame: about 1” of the place was cut off at a metal fabrication place and a new cross-piece welded in. The fabrication destroyed the powder coating so I had the remnants stripped off and a new coating put on. The modification of the A-frame allowed the transmission to clear the A-frame:
The transmission also has, what I think, realignment tabs for milling the casing. They don’t serve any function on the completed transmissions but the PS tab interferes with the bracket for the emergency brake so I used my Dremel tool to cut it off.
The transmission connects to the chassis via a Suspension Dynamics suspension mount attached to the A-frame. The photo below shows the transmission mount and the underside of the transmission. In the photo, the transmission is being held off of the 4” frame cross-member by a piece of wood. Without the wood, the transmission would be resting on the cross-member rather than the transmission mount. To alleviate this issue, I added Al spacers in the form of 1/4” bar stock between the transmission mount and transmission. The final number of spacers will depend on the pinion angle in the final suspension setup.
