Intro new member BN7 with 289 project

[3000bn7]

I had the same idea about the wedge cuts. I am in no position to suggest that though! Chris was doing the welding as a favor and I am far enough away that I can't really see what the possibilities are. I had one idea to try to dump the left header to the inside under the oil pan and back across the top of the right frame rail so that we could do side exit on the passenger side. Things are too tight under there once I checked it out myself. I have also wanted to have some kind of crossover, but again, things are too tight.

Expedience is 90% of the plan now so that we can get it together and start testing before taking it apart for the final finish work and build.

Thanks for the comments! We are gaining on it...

Steve has the smaller clutch master installed but I don't think it is bled yet to test that.

[DiDueColpi]

A little late to the party but.....
Back in the day, I, for some misguided reason stuffed a LT1 into the lovely Lynne's 82 hard top 2dr Mazda 626. No it's not a typo.
I wanted it to look Mazda ish. so the Mazda script was grafted onto the valve covers and a Mazda air filter lid was used on the dual snorkel Pontiac air cleaner base. The rear end was a 9 inch with 15" steel wheels all around. The factory 4 spoke mags were machined in half and used as hub caps to maintain the look.
However the incentive for this post is the exhaust. There was no room for it to exit the engine compartment. So a set of swept back shorty headers were installed backwards facing the  front of the engine. The exhaust crossed over in front of the engine went down both sides of the trans and joined up into a single 3 inch out the back of the car.
With the balance pipe in front of the engine and the convergence into a single exhaust the thing sounded incredible.
It looks like you have room for the same thing. A decent flowing exhaust with very little compromise.

Live like you mean it.
Fred

[3000bn7]

I recall Ford 390 engines in trucks having a front crossover. i don't think we have room for that, it is tight with the steering, fans, etc.

Minor update today, the 5/8" clutch master seems to work better. Now that the engine can be run longer with some carb work, we see that the driveshaft is hitting the emergency brake mechanism inside the tunnel. We have a 3" dia driveshaft, maybe just too big.

[3000bn7]

Looks like this will be the driveshaft solution. Funny, we had the other one custom made...

[3000bn7]

Looks like the new driveshaft will work well.

[3000bn7]

View from the transmission to the rear New shaft is still pretty close to the brake mechanism. I think the Ford rear must have the pinion offset more than the Healey did. I doubt we took account of this when we were building the housing. Not sure about the 8", but the 9" was designed to have a much lower pinion position for lower cars being designed. That could play into this as well, there is a lot of headroom in the tunnel.

[ag1234]

Good point Fred, keep our options open. Thanks to Chinese polished stainless SBF shorty hedders, can be readily
   modded to fit other small block V8's. RV8's, 4.9L. Cad's/etc.
                                                                                                        Cheers,  Aer.

[3000bn7]

Starting to put the body back on with proper bolting, etc. to be able to start running the car for shakedown work.

[3000bn7]

Some housecleaning need on panel gaps, etc. The LR fender needed to be cut and re-gapped. A bit of Dynaglass to cover things and a quick coat of either Chevy or Hemi orange will tidy it up for the shakedown phase. The rocker [repro] will also need to be corrected, the indent is in the wrong place and these fenders have various old patches that will need to be done better.

[3000bn7]

Body mostly back together.

[3000bn7]

The vertical grille looks better but the opening and trim for the original horizontal grille do not fit it properly, there a small gaps at each end. The obvious solution is to remove more bars and create the later factory rally look. We'll need to make the aluminum 'scoops' to finish it out. Our radiator is wider than stock, but we should be able to work things together OK.

[3000bn7]

Not much happening on this, other distractions like always. I saw that the site had been down for upgrades and that new submissions were being requested. This shows the carb being resealed this week, it was leaking pretty badly when we first ran the car last time. Hoping for more activity this winter!

[3000bn7]

A bit more carb work.