Last week I was able to get some help from my friend Raz and got most of the motor assembled and ready to go.  We hit a whole lot of snags, namely getting ahold of the stupid 8mm bolts that are 5 inches long that go into the back of the oil pan and tracking down a 1/8 NPT tap so we could block off the OEM dip stick location.

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!