Transaxle Mounting Brackets

I quickly found out that purchasing mounting brackets wasn't going to be easy. I checked a lot of places only to come up empty. So, time to make my own.

I had laying around the transmission mounts from a 1990 Mustang Gt that I used to upgrade the drive-line for my 1965 F100. I took the mount side of the assembly and cut it down to make both ends the same size and shape. I then removed the bushings and cut them down to the same size of the mounting bracket on the Pantera. I also trimmed down the mount itself to fit the new size of the bushings. Here's a shot of what I ended up with.

I decided to use a piece of 1/4" plate to begin modifying the mount to fit the transaxle. After removing the rubber mounts I welded the piece of 1/4" using the hole in the Mustang mount. Here's what that gave me.

I then boxed in the mount like below.

Finally I added a rough cut piece of 1/4 plate that will attach to the triangle piece that will mount to the transaxle itself. I will cut this down to size when I get the exact position of the mount in relation to the transaxle. Here's what it looks like.

I then made a mounting plate using the hole pattern on the transaxle itself. When I had this piece done I then set the engine/transaxle in place in side the Pantera. I was careful to make sure the assembly was aligned properly and level then marked the mount where it should be attacked to the mounting plate and then welded it up. Here's how they turned out.

Engine Mounting

This was a big day for progress. There is nothing more exciting than to see the engine sitting in your car. Your imagination starts to run wild when you see it in place.

The process for me started with looking on line to see how people installed their engines. It's pretty tight in that back of the Pantera so I wanted to be ready to do whatever was needed to get it safely into the bay. First thing I needed to do was make lifting bar for my hoist. I used a piece of 3/8's flat steel and drilled a few holes to hand the chains from.

I decided to remove the intake to make more room for the installation. I used two 8mm course thread holes lift from the front and two of the 9mm course threaded holes on the bell housing to lift from the rear. I borrowed the idea to use tie down straps to lift the tail of the transaxle as the assembly goes in. Here's a picture of the engine hooked up to the hoist.

Here's a shot as the assembly got airborne. You can see the blue tie down strap on the tail of the transaxle. By the way, that's my future son-in-law from England jacking up the engine. He's learning the advantages of good old American horsepower first hand with the Pantera.

As we jacked up the assembly we simply tightened the tie down strap to get the tail up and the nose down. Here's a shot as it is going over the back of the Pantera.

You notice I used two straps at this time. When one got to short to pull up any further I put a second one on it an removed the first one and prepped it to take the place of the second one when it got too short. The same HAS to be done as you lower the back end of the transaxle. I got lucky when I mistakenly loosened one strap before putting the second one in place. That tail dropped in fast. I was so fortunate it has already cleared the back end. It would have definitely made some serious dents.

I did have to remove the exhaust manifolds in order to get the engine to fit past the shock towers and the roll cage. I think I will be able to fit them back on later - more on that in another post. Here's how tight it is sitting in place on both the left and right side of the engine.

The back sump of the oil pan is hitting a cross member on the frame. I will deal with that issue in another post as well. For now, here's how she looks right now.

Here's the engine setting in place. It isn't where it needs to be permanently but I'm close. With a few modifications it should fit like a glove. Better pictures will come in later posts as I do the modifications needed to get it locked into place.

I pulled out the engine and put it back in a few times to make sure I identified all the areas that needed a little trimming. I found a total of four spots that needed to be worked on. First the cross member blocking the oil pan needed to go. Here's a shot of what it looks like with the member cut out.

The piece I left will be cut off at a later date. A new set of cross members will be welded in at a later time. Next I had to take a little off the driver's side shock tower to make room for one of the rear exhaust stud. I thought I was going to have to take away more but it was a pretty minor cut. Here's a shot of what I removed.

Basically what I removed was where the all the pieces of sheet metal came together and were spot welded. Once removed I welded the edges to hold all the pieces in place. Next I removed one of the reservoir tank holders that was on the driver's side shock tower. I'll have to find another place to mount this tank at a later time. You can see from the shot below where I cut away the mounting bracket.

Finally I needed to make a little more room for the oil cooler on the bottom of the Coyote engine. I didn't need much room but decided to take away the seam sticking up form the driver's side frame running from the fire wall back. I removed about 1' from under where the oil cooler and filter sit. I once again welded up the open ends to keep things holding together.

While working on making the transaxle mounts I found one more thing that needed a trim. There is a tab on the driver's side valve cover that is hitting the roll cage. I ground it off and the engine fits so much better. Here's a before and after of the tab.

While setting the engine in one more time to check to see how the transaxle mounts were going to work I saw a couple more places that needed to be trimmed to get the engine to set just right. First I needed to remove a little of the back of the cross member of the roll cage. I know this will eliminate it from ever being raced in a sanctioned event, but I'm never going to do that so out came the grinder. I needed about 1/2" more to help the right head of the Coyote engine to clear (the right head sticks out a little further than the left - go figure). Here's a shot of what it looked like when I cut away the back side of the cross member.

I then used a piece of 1/4" plate to reinforce where I cut out the pipe and sealed the ends with sheet metal. Here's how it looked after welding it all together.

Next I decided to take a little more off the top of the driver's side frame to make it a little easier to change the oil. Here's a shot showing the entire area that was ground away and rewelded to join all the pieces together.

Next I added a cross member about 7" forward from where the original cross member was. You can see where the original cross member was next to the bolts and nuts holding the lower control arm.

Here's a shot of the entire engine bay with some paint on the areas that were changed. I was able to place the engine in place and block it up making it ready for the fabrication of the motor mounts. Look for that project in a later post.

Bell Housing Install

I ordered a bell housing from Quicktime through Jegs. Here's the link I used. http://www.jegs.com/i/Quick-Time-Bellhousing/698/RM-8084/10002/-1?parentProductId=#moreDetails. It cost a staggering $567. It was made to fit the 5.0 Coyote engine I'm using. Gotta do what you gotta do - right?

The bell housing came with all the bolts and mounting plate as well. I found I needed to do a few modifications to the setup to get it to fit just right. First thing I had to do was cut a slot in the mounting plate to allow it to fit around a protruding part of the Crank Sensor.

Here's a picture of the area that is giving me troubles. The old flex plate's mounting plate didn't come all the way around to interfere with this protruding piece.

Here you can see how much the plate is pushed away from the mounting surface. Time to cut a slot in the plate.

I'm glad that this slot won't be seen once the transaxle is in place. Not the best job I've ever done. At least it fixed the problem. Now the plate sits firmly up against the mounting surface on the back of the block. Here's a shot of what the final outcome was. 

Next I noticed that the plate sits right up against the connector location for the crank sensor. I would never be able to get the sensor hooked into the wiring harness unless I further modified the plate. Time to cut some more. Here's a picture of what it looks like after the second surgery. 

Now that the plate is done I turned my attention to the bell housing. After looking closely at the bolt pattern I see that only six of the eight transaxle mounting holes will line up with holes in the bell housing. The very top and very bottom mounting holes on the transaxle will be empty. Maybe a dummy bolt will go in just to make it look complete? We will see about that later. 

The two bottom most mouting holes that line up with the bell housing are actually threaded in the block of the transaxle. Where as all the other bolts thread through the transaxle into the bell housing itself (the threads are in the bell housing for these four bolts) the two on the bottom require you to bolt up from inside the bell housing itself. Not a big deal, but I wanted to make it easy to remove the transaxle if I didn't want to remove the bell housing. 

I found that there are small slots next to each of the mounting holes on the bell housing. However, those slots are too small to insert a wrench. So I decided to make the slot bigger. Here's a picture of how the bolt head looks before the slot got bigger. 

Here's what it looks like after enlarging the slot. Now a wrench will fit in nicely. Both bottom mounting bolts were slotted as shown to allow for easier disassemble if needed. This isn't a necessary step but I felt it would pay off in the long run. 

One other thing I needed to do was to purchase four longer bolts for the transaxle to bolt up to the bell housing. The bolts that they provided (shown above) were about 1/2" too short. Off to the hardware store to get longer bolts. I'm glad they know me so well down there. Nothing like projects to make friends of local store clerks.

With these pretty simple modifications I was able to bolt up the bell housing. I then decided to go ahead and bolt up the transaxle without the flywheel and clutch for now since this will make it easy for me to determine the mounting position of the engine in the bay of the car itself. More on clutch and flywheel I used in another post. 

Taking A Step Back To Enjoy The View

Since I have the engine here I decided that I need to get the Pantera ready for me to start placing the motor into place. To do so I needed to gain access to the rear boot. When I first got the car I backed into the spot it has occupied for almost 9 months now. It has been up on blocks for all that time. It was time to put the wheels and tires on the old girl and get her turned around.

I got it off the blocks and put the wheels and tires on her. I forgot how nice this thing looks. When it is on blocks you just don't get the same perspective of its beauty. Here's what she looks like setting down on all fours.

I really hated taking the wheels off and putting it back up on blocks. It was kind of a bad thing for me to see it with the wheels on. It made me want to be driving it all the more. I didn't feel a sense of urgency before I saw it with the wheels on it again. Now, I'm feeling a bit of discontentment with the progress. Oh well. Time to get over it and keep moving forward one step at a time. A lot has happened since I got #3854. I can't wait to see it on the road. Patience now!!!!

Engine Prep

OK. I finally did it. I pulled the trigger on a Coyote engine. Due to the amazing price difference I decided to go with a 2012 F150 Coyote. I know, I know... it doesn't have as much horsepower but come on now. Is that 40 HP really going to make a difference for this daily driver? The truck this came out of was hit on the side. It only had 7,000 miles on the computer. I was able to get the engine, wiring harness, computer, motor mounts, alternator, A/C compressor and mass air meter. It was an automatic truck so I will need to replace the flex plate with a flywheel in the future. All that for $4,200 (with some labor paid to my friend who got this engine for me).

I have a buddy who has used these engines in many different machines. He is currently taking the exact engine I have, supercharging it and putting it in fairly new Toyota Tacoma for a customer. Why? Just because I guess. He said these engines are perfect for dropping into project cars like mine. I think I totally agree with him.

We had a 45 day warranty on the engine. My friend worked hard to jury rig up what he had to in order to get it started. He fabricated some short pipes with small mufflers so that we could hear if there is anything weird going on inside the block. That thing sounded awesome! Noting to be concerned with with that motor.
Here's a video of the engine running. Not a great video, but you get the idea.

After verifying it was a good one I loaded it up in my 65 F100 and brought it home. Here's a few shots of the engine in the bed.

I then spent the afternoon carefully getting it out of the truck and strapping it down on an engine stand. I decided not to bolt it down since I want to put the new bellhousing I got from Quciktime on the engine and get it ready for the transaxle as soon as I can. My plan is to get the transaxel bolted up and then cherry pick it into the Pantera. I'll then block it into position and get ready to fabricate the mounting brackets for the engine and the transaxle. That'll be a separate post when I get to that part of the project.

Just so I would have this for safe keeping, here a shot of the QR code for the serial number of the engine.

First think I wanted to do was to see if what people were saying about the intake was true. As you might imagine, there won't be a lot of room between the fire wall and the front of the engine. The intake has the throttle and mass air meter right on the front of the motor. I read in a couple places the intake is symmetrical and could be reversed so that the throttle faces the back of the engine. I decided to try it for myself. Here's the before shots of the engine.

There are 10 bolts holding on the intake. Six of them are 8mm and four of them (the ones holding the fuel rails in place) are 10mm. In less than 15 minutes I had the intake off and was ready to bolt it back on again. As I set the intake in place I found a small tab that had to be ground off in order to get it to line up properly.

You can see the tab hitting the port in the middle of the picture below.

I took my angle grinder and made quick work of this plastic tab. Here's what it looked like after the work was done.

Here's the finished project. It looks really great.