It's been a little while.... I was on vacation in the Dominican Republic for a week and it has otherwise been pretty cold around here. I'll throw in what's sure to become a 2014 dated phrase "polar vortex" to describe the temperatures.
I also became a little frustrated after putting the engine in to find that it was touching the driver's footbox. I'm sure this would cause a lot of rattling with movement of the engine so this had to be fixed and the fix was going to require the engine coming back out. I felt a little better after reading some build blogs/forums that said it would be highly unusual if you didn't have to take the engine in and out a few times on a build.
To get an idea of clearances I wanted to put on the headers to see how much room was between them and the lower part of the footbox inner wall. (Because if I'm moving the upper part of the footbox in to give the engine more room, why not see if the lower part can be pushed out towards the engine to give more foot room in the cockpit?) Of course the driver's side header is nearly impossible to put on with the engine in. (I think I read that you need to take the bolts out of the engine block, put the header in, then put the bolts back in and all that is *really* tight to get a socket/wrench in there.) So I undid the transmission mount bolts, the engine mount bolts, reassembled the engine lift, and lifted the engine about 6 inches to get the headers on. (The headers, by the way, are the shiny 4-in-to-1 pipes.) Here is the driver's side:
Here is the passenger's side (much easier):
I will hopefully have a friend over to help me lower this back down. (Operating the engine lift either way is probably best done with more than 1 person.)
Lastly, I thought I would leave you with a picture from the vacation.
