ERA folks...please help / getting frustrated

[Chaplin]

Kramer-
Did you get the spacing between the body and sidepipes sorted out yet? If not, I have an idea that might help you out. I have been meaning to post this but figured I'd wait until we got back onto the regular server to add it to this thread.

Last month I installed a new motor in my car. With the old motor, the pipes were close to hitting the body cutouts, but the gap was big enough that the pipes would not hit except under hard acceleration, and then they would only rub very slightly.

When I put the new motor in, I had the same problem you did. The pipes were very close to the body cutouts- much closer than they were before with the old motor- and this was with using the same motor mounts, side pipes, etc., from the old motor. In fact, the pipes were so close to the body that I could just barely slide the open end of a 7/16 box wrench between the body and the pipes.

I double checked everything and it all looked good. The motor looked to be in the mounts straight and level, the mounts were in correctly, etc., but it was still real close. I could not think of any reason why the new motor should not have sat in the same position as the old motor (especially since I was reusing all of the old parts) but it was definetely sitting differently.

After scrathing my head for a while, I decided that notwithstanding that it looked like the motor was in all the way, straight and level, it must have been off a bit. So, I loosened the motor mount nuts and trans mount bolts (backed them off until they were just hanging on by a couple threads), put a jack under the bell housing, jacked the whole engine and trans up an inch or two and dropped the jack quickly to let the motor come down quickly into the frame mounts- I did this 3 or 4 times.

After doing that a few times, I wound up with much more room between the body and sidepipes. Now there is probably between 3/4" and 1" of clearance on the driver's side and even more on the passenger side, which is even more than I had before with the old motor.

The only thing I can think is that the motor must not have settled all the way down into the mounts the first time when I gently laid it in there with the engine hoist. If you haven't tried this yet, it might be worth an attempt before having the body cutouts opened up. Let me know how it goes.