Fitting the engine and bell housing

I arranged the chassis back onto the furniture dollies and positioned it into the work area so that I had room to maneuver the engine hoist. I assembled the engine with the bell housing after having trimmed a little more off the starter hump opening. I tried to lower the engine into place with the front pulley in place but could not find just the right angle to get it into the bay. As a result, I am looking into a two groove pulley so that it will be a little shorter. Esslinger makes just such an underdrive v-belt pulley with the added advantage of being a little smaller in diameter at 4 inches instead of the stock 6 inches. 

The good news is that the SVO intake manifold fits into the space like it was engineered for it. I had to remove the oil cooler spigot from the boss on the botton side of the manifold cooling passage but I think I can plug the upper opening and use the lower opening for the spigot. I will have to determine whether I need to use the temperature sensor that was in the lower opening.  There's a temperature sensor on the top of the manifold that I should be able to use. All this means that I just have to fabricate the upper manifold so that it positions the throttle body lower and facing aft so that I can run the intercooler around the back of the engine. There's plenty of room to do that and also to scoop cool air from the scuttle/bonnet area for the intercooler. I think this will make the neatest installation.

The exhaust manifold will have to be replaced but there are good solutions available that will allow me to use the turbocharger and integral bypass control that I have had rebuilt. I should even be able to use the stock exhauset elbow and oxygen sensor. It will put the exhaust forward in the engine bay which should help with heat in the cockpit. I would like to get a photo of how that would look but the turbocharger is heavy and I can't just prop it into position. I will go ahead and order the manifold so that I can get it fitted up while I still have the engine in the bay.

So after I had all this in position I fine tuned the engine position and leveled it using shims under the stands I am using to hold the engine in place. With all this done I did my last trick for the day by fitting the bonnet over the top of the engine. It didn't quite fit at first and I had to lower the engine a little, actually getting it to the 90mm crank height. Once I did that and re-leveled the engine the bonnet fit with about a half inch clearance at the top of the cam sprocket cover. Nice! 

I'm not sure I can make the distributor work with the clearance I have to the diagonal frame tube. The only solution I might have there is an aftermarket Cam Angle Sensor that replaces the distributor cap and uses the signal to fire individual coil packs on each spark plug. More on that after I talk to tech support.

Now I should be able to fabricate some engine mounts!