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The ether wasn’t necessary, but I thought it was cool, haha!

The front control arm was still fairly flat, even without the spacer, so I am pretty excited to see how the car handles when I finally get to drive it again.

Big thanks to Sage Auto for the excellent powder coating job on the faces!

Secondly, I realized I had not installed the new fittings for my slave cylinder on the T56.  So, since the motor was out, I ripped the transmission off the bell housing and swapped out the factory lines for the Sikky provided lines.  It took me a minute to figure it out, since there were no instructions, but after reading what someone else did I swapped the lines over relatively simply.  I feel pretty dumb it took me so long to figure it out, as it was very simple and the Sikky lines fit like a glove.

Lastly, Danny said we should put the motor in – I wasn’t about to refuse the opportunity, so we started hooking the motor up to the engine hoist.  After the motor was hooked Danny made a joke about cutting the radiator support off the car, after a few seconds I agreed and Danny hacked it off with the angle grinder!  It was something I had been thinking about doing anyway, we are going to make two little brackets and make it so the whole front end can be bolted on and off very easily.  The motor went in super easy and I was able to add the 1/2 inch worth of washers I wanted to raise it up (I beat the living shit out of the transmission tunnel to make some room).  The oil pan now sits well above the subframe and I am more at ease because of it.  It looks crooked in the picture because the transmission bracket is not bolted on yet, so the motor is not sitting quite right yet.  I might run into some hoot clearance issues with the throttle body, but I can live with that just knowing my oil pan is a little further away from danger.

http://www.sumospeed.com/?p=1192

In the past week or so I’ve been able to focus on my car again and have been buttoning up the suspension bits – as well as finalizing the motor placement in the engine bay.  Danny at RE-Spec Garage pulled the motor back out so the transmission tunnel could be beat out more  to make room for the 1/2 inch I plan on raising the motor up – for ground clearance.  I also got the rear suspension bolted back together with the new misalignment spacers.  When I get the front spacers cut, the front control arm will be spaced down ~14mms more then the rear.  As you can see in the pictures, the front arm is flat when its up in the air and the rear arm is much more corrected then the angle of the toe rod – which is where the rear arm used to be angled to.  I also got my new bolts for my tie rod ends.  You can see them compared to the shanks I am using for the LCAs.  The new bolts are 5/8″X6″, grade 8, should be more then strong enough and offer lots of bump steer adjustment.

While the car was up I took some shots of the suspension mods to show how the arms sit.  I am not done tweaking it all, I have to put the misalignment spacers on it still, which will give me another 12.5mms of adjustment from the flat adjustment shot (28.XXmm).  I was also pleased to see I had about 2 inches of travel before I hit my fender frame rails, even at this extreme of a height.  I just can’t wait to get this thing rolling!

The night started by getting the bottom end ready to accept the Sikky oil pan.  Raz trimmed the rear of the oil pan baffle then cut the two tabs off of the transmission while I installed the baffle and Sikky supplied oil pick up.

We then took the motor off the engine stand, moved it to an engine hoist and put the rear cover back on and the flywheel/clutch/pressure plate/pilot bearing in.

During the install of the pilot bearing I broke Raz’s thumb with a hammer…he was a trooper and continued to help me for another 2+ hours!  When the pressure plate was tightened down all of the way we decided to put the oil pan on even though I was missing the two rear 8m bolts for the oil pan – even though the instructions say you have to put those in first.  I had to wait about a few days for the bolts to come in at the dealership and ended up having to take the pan back off, clean the block and oil pan again and reinstall it the proper way.  Thanks to Chris for taking the pictures!

Fast forward a week and I finally have the pan installed properly.  I love the rear Sikky logo on the oil pan (I should have wiped it off before the picture).

I also installed the 60 some dollars worth of spark plugs this thing takes – I’m sure the extra torque and horse power will be worth it, haha.

…and the bad ass Sikky motor mounts!  They’re fully CNCed aluminum and have D and P on the bottom of them so you know what side is what.

Installed the starter too.

Which leads up to the last thing I did yesterday, which was fix that damn hole in the side of my transmission bell housing that is too thin to weld.

I ended up getting a piece of sheet metal and cutting and hammering it into a patch for the hole.  I thought it fit rather nicely, I just used JB weld to put it on – I am going to clean up my over abundance of JM weld today, haha.

I should have some more updates in the next couple of days!

Its a hair closer then I want on one side so I may grind down the misalignment spacer on one side about a mm so the shock mount will shift over just a tad. Overall I definitely thing was well worth the $125 bucks I spent on the welding.

I also got my Z33 inner tie rods in and was pleased to find out that they are the same length and offer more adjustability range then the S14 tien inner/outer set.

I attempted to get the car to my friend’s shop a few weeks ago but my other tie rods prevented me from doing it properly.  We got it out in the street and that was all she wrote.  I took the opportuny to take a few pictures.

I can’t wait to get the motor in and see how the front sits!