the other day I was talking to a guy who owns a 50 ford. its missing a motor and trans and he's looking for someone to set the motor trans and rear for him.. HE wants a small block chevy / turbo 350 with a late model rear.. I need to know if anyone makes mounts for this set up or if i'd need to make the mounts up for him.. also with a set up like this will the steering componants clear the motor and trans? i looked at chassis engineering but they dont make anything for this car.. any suggestions? thanks sawzall
When I was a little kid in 1960, a guy down the street had a 50 Ford Crestliner with a small block Chevy. Making motor mounts is easy....and fun...and its a lot more rewarding than buying them...and its the HAMB way
Try Fatman Fabrication Fatman's (go to pg 17-18) or JAAMCO engineering 707-544-4950. Fatman has a good writeup on how to swap SBC and SBF engines into shoebox fords. For the first time, the SBC engine is more difficult to swap than a SBF because of linkage issues. I used their motor mounts, tranny mount, and dropped uprights and mastercylinder kit on my shoebox. I also used their adapter for mounting an early '70s Volvo box which made an unbelievable difference in the drive. Posies' springs do a good job of getting the rear down. Something I haven't done but that shoeboxes severely need is a rear swaybar and maybe a larger front sway bar.
ouch.. at least tell him to keep a ford engine in a ford... but if he is paying cash money for you to do it.. do whatever he says he wants
Jeff, If you want to swing by my work sometime this week, I can lend you my copy of Tex Smith's Shoebox Ford book. It has info on the engine, tranny, and rear end swaps you're talking about. Ed
[ QUOTE ] Hotwheel - is the volvo a power or manual steering box? [/ QUOTE ] Dan, it is a manual setup. With the large '50 wheel, you don't need power. The first drive was shocking...felt like I jumped in to a BMW with the precise steering. I can drive with one hand and look away instead of the previous white nuckle driving.
Hey Sawz..........I was faced with the same dilemma. I had a kick-ass 350/350 combination and a 49 ford coupe. It had originally come with a 6 banger and I saved the 6 cylinder mount stands, drilled 1/2" holes through them for chevy style through bolts and sat 'em on some scrap pieces of box tubing. Tacked it all in place, boxed the tubing scraps and welded it all to the front crossmember. This allowed me to use 70 chevy pickup/nova/chevelle motor mounts on the stands. They sat high enough to give me about 5/8ths inch clearance between my stock drag link and the chevy [77 Camaro] oil pan. I certainly didn't want my draglink welded or spliced. Here's a photo before finish welding and boxing of the tubing pieces. And yes, I'd do it this way again in a heartbeat, even tho I had to raise the tranny hump to clear the 350 turbo. Hell, I raised the entire center hump to gain driveshaft clearance too. This was a pretty low car.
Hey Reggie...I used the stock steering box in mine [out of a donor 51 convertible] and flopped my spindle uprights with 2 loops off each coil. I agree about the use of a heavy stabilizer bar. In my photo, you can just make out the end of my 1.25" Z-28/Trans-Am stabilizer bar. This thing made a completely different car out of it. It also helped that I heated and bent down my stock steering arms [to eliminate bumpsteer] and them heated and bent the ends of them back level. This effectively shortened those arms, making for much faster steering. I ran skinny radials on the front for a light steering effort. Don't EVEN ask me about running bias plys on this car! 2 words.....death trap.
[ QUOTE ] Hell, I raised the entire center hump to gain driveshaft clearance too. This was a pretty low car. [/ QUOTE ] You are so right! To get the right stance, you have to reconstruct the driveshaft tunnel and raise it up. In my club coupe, this meant that I had to recontour the bottom of the back seat to match. I used a SBF. With a C-4 tranny, no changes are required to the tunnel at all. A C-6 or AOD requires the tranny tunnel to be re-worked. Another interesting note is that the '51 has a much, much larger tunnel area to accomodate the "new for '51" Slush-o-matic box.
Rocky, cool! What year z-28/trans am sway bar did you use? did you modify it to work in the stock location like the Jamco bar, or did you mount it differently?
Reggie, I honestly don't even remember how I mounted it to the frame but I ended up cutting off the loops on the ends and used a big, thick rubber profalactic kinda end. I slid that into the channel of the lower control arm and fabricated a clamp to keep it from popping out of the groove. I know I mounted the bar to the bottom of the frame with the Z-28 mount brackets and I'm sure I hadda drill the mount holes in the bottom rail of the frame. I'm not real proud of the way I handled attaching the ends of the bar to the control arm but it was kinda an experiment to see if I liked that heavy bar on that light car. I loved it! I had plans on doing a proper re-mount later but like many of my plans, I never got around tuit. Hey! I'd have done it right if the rubbers ever wore out but they didn't before I eventually sold the car at DesMoines Goodguys in '93...here it is at DesMoines....I was workin on the rear bumper...left it at home.
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