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BYO
Since my pan was off the car any way I built my own. To make it easier and because I am using a Porsche trans, I went with the padded ureathane off road rear mount. You can use stock rubber mounts and stock trans with it. The mount has holes to mount the bottom part of an engine cage on it. It goes from frame horn to horn to beef them. I got it from scat.
There were a couple of holes where the Z bar used to go through the shock towers, but they are to low and the crossbar would hit the trans. Using the shock tower bolt holes was also out because I wish to use adjustable shocks and I didn't want to take the Kafer bar off to adjust the shocks. Right below and foward of the shock mount holes is a lightening hole. Looking around I found some 1/2 inch heavy wall tubing. I taped both ends with a 7/16 inch tap and drilled out two short pieces to 7/16 inch. Then the lightening holes were drilled out in line to connect each other on opposite sides with a 1/2 inch bit. Using long bolts and nuts I bolted together the long shock tower to shock tower tube with the short tubes in the holes I had drilled in the shock towers. Using washers to space every thing right I then tack welded the short tubes to the shock towers. Taking every thing apart I finished welding the short tubes into the shock towers. It welded well so it is cast steel and not cast iron.
For the short tubes from the shock towers to the rear of the trans mount I cut some 1/4 inch plate, drilled mount holes and band sawed the sides down alittle past the bolt holes so that I had a spine which would fit into the down tubes. It looks like a pancake turner with a hole in the wide flat part and the shaft of the turner goes into the down tube. Four of these were made for the four ends of the down tubes. Bolting every thing up the splines were bent to match the angles from the shock tower mount of the upper bar to the trans mount holes. With the top bar adjusted in place and the bottom two bars adjusted in place the ends of the bottom bars were tacked, the bars disassembled and completely welded.
For final assembly the bolt through the top mounts had two nuts on it one locks the tubing length and the other locks the bolt to the inserts I welded into the shock towers. The upper mounts for the down tubes also have the same bolt and nut fastening them to the shock towers. Only the top tube is adjustable.
Making the down rods adjustable did not make sense as if you pull in top rod the bottom rods pull up the wishbones. Now as far as preload, I could not get a definitive answer on this one so this is why I did what I did. On the rear of the engine the cooling tin does not line up most of the time it is below the lip of the body allowing air to escape. This means that the wishbones over time have been bent down by the weight of the motor. There fore with no weight on them they would be closer to the original position. Seeing as it would have complicated things alot more to have and engine and trans mounted while I did all this I had to assume the position the wishbones were in with no trans or engine would be close to what was needed. I went with the static height of the wishbones and the static width of the shock towers to be the desired dimensions.
It took about $30.00 in materials and about four hours. This is a very worth while modification. Before I could wack the wishbone with a rubber hammer and watch it vibrate. Now the whole pan vibrates.
It is alot easier than I can explain it. This is what I did and I stick with it. Hope it helps. Whew! That took an hour of typing!
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