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Don't forget about the upright's height increasing the load in the arms.

Your sketches are way better than mine. What program are you using?

Duh. Yes, I was forgetting that... The ball joint isn't at the ground. That gets me to 1440 at the lower ball joint, 766 in each leg. It still seems like your number is doubled.

I just do illustrations in Autodesk QuickCAD v8. I've been using it for my 2D CAD work since the mid-'80s when it was a DOS program (Drafix). Autodesk bought it a few years ago, sold it alongside Autocad, Autocad LT, and Autosketch. Then they dumped their Autosketch code and marketed QuickCAD and Autosketch as identical products at two different prices... then of course quit selling the one that cost half as much. Soo now you can get it as Autosketch 9 for ~ $112.

Could be the angles of the legs?

In your pic, you have the two inboard points about 6.25" fore/aft from the BJ. My points are 5.815" forward and 7.685" back. The 450mm measurement in your pic is a little under 15.75" on my geometry.

The distance from the contact patch to the LBJ is 6" and the distance from the contact patch to the UBJ is 17.132". The tire is a 195/55-15.

I ended up deciding on an engine; I'm going 4A-GE with a Corolla transmission. The only problem is the 4A-GE I got is probably not going to run in its current state (I'm guessing thats the reason for it being listed as a core). Assuming I'm not done or have a working engine by that point, this one might be a winter project.

Regardless, it should be going in tomorrow night. It looks like everything should fit nicely and I'll just need to relocate some plumbing lines.

The transmission is at about the right height in the pics; the engine will be sitting about an inch lower to match up. I should still have 3.5-4" of sump clearance.

The engine is in. I still need to figure out the tranny mount.

I'm still not entirely sure if I like the engine mounts or not; they're really long but they're also 1/8" stuff.

On another note, this is going to be one tiny driveshaft. I'd need to look into it more but I'm wondering if I'll actually need to balance this or not.

SCR, I looked over my numbers. That load accounted for weight transfer under braking as well - thats probably why its so high.

I love how you tied your rear subframe in with the corners of the rear bulkhead. How high is that engine sticking up above the top of your frame rail?

Thanks - there are still more tubes going in to the rear bulkhead to tie in the shock mounts.

The frame rail slants down towards the front of the car in the engine bay. At the back, its between 9 and 10" from the top of the rail to the top of the filler cap and 10" to 11" in the front. The oil pan sticks about an inch below the cockpit floor.

As usual, the intake is easily the highest point of the engine. I'm thinking a composite buldge in the hood might be an easy way around trying to modify this.

Its been a slow couple of weeks in the garage.

I've managed to get the steering rack installed; it still needs some gusseting to keep the tube from lozenging under load and a mount on the column.

When I was in HF, this pack of shims caught my eye. I usually ignore HF hardware since its sub-grade 2 hardware in my book but these seemed like they might have potential. They easily paid for themselves when it came time to shim the rack's height - I'm sure they'll have other uses (quick change shims for setting up bumpsteer?)

Andrew

If you set the drive line angle at just 1 degree you and probably get the engine to fit under the hood. The only problem will be is the intake manifold, that will have to be sectioned.

With the engine centered in the frame and the oil pan 1 5/8 below the frame tube you should have about 3/8" clearance using 1" above book shuttle height. i.e. CMC.

If you want to, contact me off line and I can send a few pictures of the engine position and manifold.
Dave W

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into it before I bolt the transmission down.

Can you send it through a PM if you don't want to post it here? Let me know if you need any dimensions.

If I place a straight edge on the top of the leg hoop and have it rest on the filler cap, it does have a decent slant down. I might have to do something like SkinnyG did with his 4A-GE and do a custom intake.

I also double checked the distance from the top of the engine to the top of the frame rails that I posted previously; the back height is about 8".

The seats and harnesses are mounted. I still need to make some little brackets to keep the anti-submarine belt and the shoulder belts from sliding left and right on the tubes.

Has anyone else with the 15.5" Kirkey seats had 3" shoulder belts dig into your neck since the opening seems to be too narrow? How did you fix it; make the hole larger? Right now it seems like my only option other than raw gouges in my neck each time I drive.

There has been some small progress - the rest of the bulkhead behind the cockpit is done.

Nicely done. Looks really stout.

I've gotten a chance to look into it a little more now that the seats are in and I can actually sit in the car. I think I'm going to end up doing something like this with some 1.25"x1.25"x0.065". It seems to clear elbows fine.

There will probably be some sheet or plate to close it in and some gusseting to support the elbow bar and diagonal.

I finally got a few clear days in the garage. The rear suspension is just about in place. I finally had to decide on a shock location and just build the darn arms and mounts.

Randy pointed out the rod-end orientation effecting travel a few months back and I thought it was alright from my models. Well I misunderstood the spec'ed 17 degrees of travel; I read it as 17 degrees from center to interference. Apparently its 17 degrees from interference in one direction to interference in the other direction (so I have half the travel I thought I did). The upper arm mounts need to have the bolts positioned fore/aft instead of vertically - the fronts need redone still.

I've also gotten the transmission mounts in place. From emailing with davew, he strongly suggested making the brace removable so the transmission could swing down during removal. Hopefully this set up will work; it appears to clear everything.