Australia Day – A story of success, failure and grinder sparks….

The day started off with the construction of a new gearbox mount to shift the 1MZFE 20mm forward to give more clearance around the boot firewall and stop the plenum form hitting it.

I set forth cutting up the old mount I made, to recover the mount center for the new one. Once recovered, I started milling it flat to use on the new one.

And it was good

Then it was welded to the new gearbox plate

And it was good

So I started on finishing a proper mount for the motor side, instead of the crap aluminium test jig.

And it was good…

Clearance was good… Plenum missed the firewall by around an 1″ – 1.5″

Clearance to the engine cover was sweet…

Then I climbed under the car to check the clearance and angle of the sump…

As James May would put it, “OH COCK!” 
The ground clearance was barely 3″ once the suspension sagged down with the weight of the motor and it could only get lower when hitting bumps. Running over small children and dogs would now put the sump into fubar territory… In my midst of making new mounts, I had totally forgotten that these things are eccentric mounts, so when I rotated the mount for the gearbox 90 degrees and the motor mount 180 degrees, poo poo was now low, wife bashing low… 

But, there was still some day light left, and still some inspiration to be had!
The motor mount, this was an easy fix, flip the mount back up the other way.

This restored the clearance back to a decent level

I can now run over small children and dog again without fear of losing my sump 
But the motor is now on a bit of a lean…

So I have to chop my gearbox mount up for a second time and remove a good 0.5″ – 1″ from it to get the gearbox height back to where it should be…. That will be Friday nights job…