Engine Mountings

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Engine mountings completed this weekend with the engine set to be two inches below chassis underside. This is a bit more under-hang than I wanted but I may modify my sump to bring that back up a bit. The alternative is to have the engine way too high and have problems getting a bonnet to cover it.

As you can see here I have essentially fabricated a crossmember just like on many RWD cars. The other advantage of this approach is that the extra uprights along tubes J1/2 and F1/2 will allow me to use more effective triangulation in what tends to be a weak spot on the chassis. This will result in greater torsional rigidity which will be important with the V8 engine...

Closeup view of the engine mounting. Note that this is just tacked in place for now, I'll fully weld at the same time as the rest of the chassis. Note also that it is a shadow at the top of the vertical tube, not a badly fitted tube. When I saw the picture I thought I'd made a mistake with the cut of the tube but on closer inspection it is just a shadow...

Reverse view of above. Note that I have welded in crush tubes into the SHS box section so that the bolts can be torqued up without crushing the box section. I may plate the little triangle with 3mm plate later too for extra strength. Also, the plate spanning tubes G and F is made from two thicknesses of 3mm plate (6mm total) which were welded together carefully before adding the uprights.

Overview

Well that's about it for now. I'm busy creating a CAD drawing of my chassis in Solidworks so that I can see how things will go together before I actually weld them from now on...