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Monday, January 22, 2018

Two Steps Back


Very windy today, but the temperature was in the seventies, so I pulled the engine without any problems, and without freezing my butt while crawling under the car.

Before removing the motor mount brackets, I remeasured everything to see if I had made a dimensional error somewhere. It was better than expected! Every pertinent dimension for the mount and bracket location was within .12 of those specified in the Mopar Performance chassis manual, so the underlying cause remains a mystery.

While I was pleased that I hadn’t mis-measured, it was disappointing to find no mention of possible interference between starters and steering gear boxes in the MP manuals. The generic cautions about limited clearance for headers don’t really apply since my installation is almost stock and there is  no problem with exhaust pipe locations. The transmission dipstick tube is closer to the manifold dump than I'd like, but if I can find a better shaped tube to cure the previously noted complaint, maybe it too will be a better fit.

Granted, FL cars are not the favorites for hot-rodders, so lesson learned…when you deviate from stock in any way on finned Mopars, you are on your own. So what else is new?

Cutting off the mount brackets will be fun as I really welded those in!  Tomorrow, the weather is turning again, so I’m not sure when I'll get to tackle the motor mount surgery.

I did make a tooling jig for relocating the parts, so I’ll be ready to go when it warms up again.

2 comments:

  1. ..is this applicable to your application ?

    http://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/2439487/mini-starter-question.html

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  2. That's the same mini-starter I have, and in the area of interference there is virtually no size difference between them. Like in the thread, the terminal post clearance is improved by removing the adapter. I did that on both my '64 Valiant slant six, and my '73 D-100 318.

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