The game is afoot!

Yesterday was a good landmark. After a beaastly wrestle with a 14 foot trailer and a very tight entrance to the garage yard, I finally got the Sivlia into her new home! At last, the garage is now filled. (Sort of... still need somewhere to store all the gubbins and what not...)

Gave me a good chance to start sizing up what will and wont fit now that all the components of this V8 build are in the same place. First off, the basic dimensions of the block are indeed smaller than that of the bay. On paper, it will fit! That sweeping statement could not be further from the truth though. As anyone who has ever moved an engine around an engine bay can testify, an engine is not a 6 sided block, and an engine bay is not a square hole. The engine bay in fact looks a little like this:

The front of the car is on the left of the picture, the firewall on the right. One thing that you will see straight away is the large subframe and steering rack smack bang in the middle of the bay. I think this will be my first hurdle, as the V8's sump drops down to pretty much exactly where this is. Solution? Custom sump with repositioned oil pickup. Will require some fancy welding but not outwith my capabilities. Next issue?

This. The steering arm comes down in 2 universal joints to the rack, and the V8 has its starter motor positioned almost exactly where this lies once its fitted. Will maybe get away with rotating the rack so the shaft comes in at a different angle, but i wont know for sure until i offer the V8 up with the motor in place to find out....  Probable solution will be a wider rack that lets the arm come in at a tighter angle to the crossmember and interferes less with the engine bay space.

Last issue i could see last night was this:

This is the hole and 2 bolt fixings for the clutch slave cylinder on the firewall. On the original car it was blanked off (an auto, remember?) but for a manual the clutch pedal will act on this. Usually a 4 pot (or even inline 6) engine will never cause this to be an issue, but the V8 is one wide bugger, and the left bank rocker cover looks like it will possibly foul against this. Not entirely sure on the solution to this as yet either, but i guess actually having the relevant slave cylinder would help to establish if i'm gonna have an issue here!! The 2 pipes to the right are for the heater matrix. I think i can get these to offer up to the inlet manifold takeoffs on the V8 easily enough, so no qualms there.

So thats us for now. Plenty to think about, but nothing earth shattering in engine conversion-land. Unlike our Simon, who has a slightly more complex build ahead of him......