Not so Amish body raising

Hot day today in St Louis, what better time to work outside?  With the frame done, engine mounted, and steering sorted, it's time to find out how the body fits.  With help from a half dozen friends (Kurt, Amanda, Matt, Rob, and Scott) it felt a bit like an Amish barn raising with no tools, although I guess they wouldn't touch cars, so it's really nothing like that.  Thankfully a simple job with six people it probably took less than a minute. 

Here is the frame sideways in the garage, with the body directly behind.  Close fit, but it does fit sideways in the garage. Many hands makes light work lifting the body up and onto the frame.  Likely we will have to do this a couple more times, so it's good to know it doesn't weigh much even with the windshield and backlight still in.

 Here are a few pictures of the fit around the engine and transmission.  The body needs to slide forward about an inch (see the second picture below), which will tighten up the big gap between the motor and firewall.  It should sit just about right with the body in the correct position.  The top of the transmission is hitting just a little, so once that is clearanced the body will easily move in to position. It's exciting for me just to see the body back on the frame, even if just for a few days. Progress!

Next time, remember to put the computer forward on top of the motor.

 Lots of clearance for the floor and firewall to the header.  I wish the clearance to the frame was this good.  Probably still need some good heat shielding around the catalytic convertors, but that is a long way off to worry about.

 Here you can see where the firewall hits the transmission.  We left plenty of metal so it should be an easy job to cut more out, and use the new floorpans.  We may need to add about 4" to the middle to get the necessary clearance.  It won't hurt to have a little extra either.

 Here is where the shifter sits.  I was guessing where the seat goes, and I think it will be in a very comfortable position, not too far back in the chassis.  Plenty of room around the driveshaft as well.  More than anything it is a bit unnerving to know what is spinning just the other side of a thin piece of sheet metal.

 It's a little easier to see in this picture where the shifter needs to move to.  Look where the two ridges are at the front of the floor, and where they are in the old floor plan on top, 4-5" back from the original position.  I think we will use the original floor pan around the shifter to fill the gap, which just leaves a small strip in front to fill.  I don't think it will be a bad job, but we have to mark everything, then take the body off again to cut and weld the panel in.  Hopefully I can find enough people around to test fit the panels before we weld them in solid and mount the body to send everything back to the body shop. Seems like a lot of extra work, but the more test fitting, the better the final product will be.

Steering clearance at last, oil pan v. 3

 Third times a charm, right?  We started with an LH8 oil pan (used on Hummer, etc) that fit great over the frame until I tried to fit the tie rods.  The tie rods hit the pan pretty solidly, which would be a bad thing if you cranked the wheel and cracked open the oil pan.  Think catastrophic engine failure.  Thankfully, Mast Motorsports just came out with a case oil pan that addresses this problem.  There were other cheaper options, but none have the oil filter mounted on the pan.  My goal is to stay closer to stock, so I didn't like these options.  Mast is pricey, but looked like it would work. The LH8 pan is in the back in the picture below, Mast at the bottom.  They had to put reliefs in the oil pan to allow for the oil tube and the windage tray.  It looks like every attempt was made to make the front of the pan as skinny as possible.

 The LH8 pan is on the right below.  The other point to notice is the rear of the pan isn't as deep on the Mast pan compared to the LH8.  Why does this matter?

Well, compare the next two pictures. First is with the LH8 pan, second is with the Mast pan.  See the LH8 pan sticking a couple inches below the crossmember?  If you hit a speedbump or hole in the pavement, the first think you will hit is the oil pan.  Cast aluminum doesn't bend when hit, so this could result in total loss of oil if it gets hit.  The Mast pan solved this problem as well.  I HATE buying parts twice, so learn from my mistake and buy the Mast pan first.  I do have an LH8 pan for sale though...

 Even with the Mast pan, we had to shim the motor mounts to get complete clearance with the tie rod ends and the oil pan.  We used three skinny washers between the motor mount and the block to get clearance.  We probably could have got away with one or two; with three there is a good 1/8" clearance  between the oil pan and tie rod ends.  I figure if anything settles or moves around the extra clearance is good insurance, so we left all three washers in place. Carquest built a high pressure power steering hose for me to connect the Camaro pump to the Jeep Grand Cherokee box.  It's a simple part, but critical and looks like it was designed to fit.  Maybe I'm easily amused, but there is a lot of satisfaction to get these custom parts to fit and look like they aren't custom.  Next step for me is to mock the body on the frame, and finish the floor around the shifter. We're not done with the custom bits by a long shot, but if the steering shaft fits with the headers, we will be in very good shape with mounting the LS1.