placing and jigging major items

Now that I have the hole cut for the transmission cut, I figured I should put the bell housing and engine back in just as a double check.  It is a good thing I did.  I had been torqueing the engine to the side with a weight and later with a jack to make the top face of the shifter housing parallel to the transmission tunnel.  This seemed reasonable.  Turns out it isn't right.  The top face of the shifter is 4° off level if the engine is level on the roll axis.  Which meant the transmission at its new orientation collides with the Passenger side too.  Some quick (and hopefully final) chopping:

Notice in the top picture I elected to make a cut and slam things a little wider rather than remove a bunch more material.  So now it is tempting to get some steel and close up this hole I made.  I know things will shift around a little, and that I may have to adjust position when everything gets to its final place up front, so I decided to make the subframe and engine mounts next.

The first step here is to see where everything lands.  I took the rack from the mustang and need to place it in the focus.  I Recall from my calculations that not relocating the steering arm means that I want the rack as far forward as possible to get close to neutral ackerman, I also know that I will want it as high as possible to make the battle against bumpsteer more manageable.  So now lets locate it there.  The mounts are about 1.25 inch diameter with the bushing removed.  PVC is 1 3/8 inch O.D.  So I cut a short length and turned it down in the lathe until it just fit.  Jammed it in there and pressed the other end into a piece of wood:

By clamping the wood it is easy to tweak the rack to the right angle and height I want while I design the frame.  Next I will need the other important pieces in there.  So I remounted the headers and the solid stamped piece of the engine mounts.  Then I cut some more PVC and started to look at where the first piece of engine cradle will run to:

Hold the rack, but miss the steering column

Reach the engine mounts

Miss the headers

Bolt onto the suspension subframe.

Doesn't fit perfect yet, but getting there:

Also went to a car show in Skippack today.  Some nice cars there:

And just in case you think I only take pictures of British cars:

I suspect this belongs to the family I bought my donor car from.