The Brudwich asked for a couple pics a few days ago, so here they are. I have a seven inch stretch in front of the firewall in the frame, which helps some. Even without that, shifter placement would be good, and the engine wouldn't be that far back.
Rodney, is that a GM or Ford T5? What did you use for an adapter? Hydraulic or manual clutch set up? I've been meaning to ask you these questions for some time.
Need info on the trans adapter too. I'm going with that combo..Mount info for the motor and trans would be cool too. Was the stretch necessary to accomodate this drivetrain?Or was it already there? I'm going to get a new frame built, any info would help.
The T5 is from an '89 Mustang, the adapter is just like the one pictured on ford-y-block.com, I don't remember where I ordered it from. I'm running a hydraulic clutch, Ansen swing pedals with '60 Chevy truck master cylinder and slave cylinder. Hot rod pro built the bracket to mount the slave cylinder. The stretch wasn't really necessary to accomodate the drivetrain, it's just the look that I wanted for the car. Without any stretch, you'll have to recess the firewall a little. For the trans mount, the Ford rubber mount is pretty bulky, we redrilled the tailshaft housing for a standard GM tranny mount that's much smaller. I have a bolt in drop-out in the crossmember to make it easier to drop the trans. The engine mounts are Chassis Engineering frame mounts, trimmed down for the width of the frame, and rubber biscuits. The mount bolted to the engine, I built. Any more questions, or detail pics you want, let me know.
Here's the 312 in my 29 PU. I used a toploader 4spd and swing pedals from a 55 Chevy. Reworked a bell crank (z-bar) from an unknown GM to work. The pic without the headers show the home-made motor mounts using 40-ford style buscuits. I slid the body back 4" on the frame & made a flat firewall with a recess for the distributor.
Looks good Corn Fed. Anything done to your 312 other than the intake? I'm starting to plan my next Y-block for the coupe, probably be a built 292 since I haven't found any buildable 312's that aren't way overpriced, and I have two standard bore 292 blocks. I love the 312 that I have, I've put about 28,000 miles on it in the past three years, not exactly babied miles either.
Nothing wrong with a 292. The general consensus is that they're actually a stronger engine, bottom-end wise. Corn Fed, did you run into any issues mating up the toploader???
Thanks for the info. BTW, I'm in the process of mating a toploader to a 292 in a 59 Ranchero. I don't know what year my toploader is, but it has a dual pattern mounting flange. Sitting it beside a three speed out of a Y-block, i did notice that the length of the input shaft where it locates in the pilot bearing was longer on the 4-speed. Did you find this caused a problem for you? What were the advantages of using the 302 clutch assy? Thanks.
When I had my 4spd next to the original 3spd, I don't remember it having any differences except for the OD being bigger like I had said above. I don't know if there are diffenecs in input shaft lengths. Maybe I just got lucky. Bolt it up and see if it all fits together. It might not be a problem at all. I don't think there is any real advantage to using a 302 clutch assy over the y-block's original one. I just figured it's better to have as big a disk as possble plus the fact that a 302 disk and P-plate are probably easier to get at the parts store than the one off the y-block.
The Jalopy Journal
