engine placed

Placing the engine is pretty critical.  Too low, and there won't be enough ground clearance, or room to get the structure and the rack under the engine.  Too high and the hood has to be cut.  Too far forward and the radiator won't fit, and the shift lever won't line up.  Too far back and the exhaust won't make the turn to go under the car, the brake lines don't have room, and the engine may rattle against the chassis while driving.

Also, the engine must be between 1° and 3° downhill towards the back, dead level on roll axis, aligned with the center line of the car on the yaw axis.

As complicated as that sounds, pretty much I shot for as far back as I could get without hitting stuff, and as high as I could and still maintain pitch angle.  As we saw last time this meant chopping a bracket inside the tunnel.  Once I had the proper angle on the engine, I found that the transmission collided with both sides of the tunnel well before getting to that bracket.  I decided to massage the tunnel in a couple key spots with a BFH.  It worked beautifully.  Car steel is very soft to facilitate stamping and forming.  Even in the spots where there was a doubler, it wasn't hard to knock some good dents.  In stubborn spots I put the back of a ball peen hammer in the precise spot I wanted, then hit the front of the ball peen hammer with the BFH.

 

This all allowed the transmission to go so high that its entire top hit the entire top of the tunnel.  I think it is safe to say that any higher would be impractical.  I lowered it a tiny bit from here and called that good.
 Next was the angle.  I measured before starting the projects and found that the rear fender is 0.25 inches higher than the front fender at stock ride height. Since I know the wheel base, I could measure the current fender heights and figure out what angle the car is at compared to how it should be, and adjust engine angle to account for this.  I started out with the angle finder flat on top of the lower intake manifold.  I had previously noticed that the sump seemed at a different angle so I checked it across three sump bolts and saw it was vastly different than the top of the intake.

I figured that the tail shaft of the transmission is really what matters so I checked it and got the same measurement as for the sump.  

The engine didn't hang level on the roll axis.  I hung some weight from the header to torque the engine to level.

For the yaw axis I held a board against the inside of the bumper and measured the distance from the left and right edges of the crank pulley to the board.

I was psyched that engine did not shift at all when I released it onto the stand.  The leveling feet that capture the screw heads worked really well.

Just for a sanity check I scoured the internet for someone else with this engine trans combo.  I found some pictures and ground clearance info for another guy's set up, and they were identical to my placement as far as I could tell.