Ever forget something at home and have to turn around to get it? Every agonizing step of the way back seems to take an eternity. That's what it felt like having to remove the engine from the cradle and make the exhaust notches.
Once the cradle was finally liberated, I got busy with the angle grinder and cut off the aft engine mounting pad to raise it:
I wanted to save it so I used the thinnest cut-off wheel I had, and went very gingerly at the welds. It came off without too much lost material but I did notice that the brand new hydraulic mount had been leaking!
The next step was to notch the aft crossmember. I used a 3" diameter hole saw to get started but eventually finished with a high speed carbide burr:
Then, to box up the notch, I found some 3" diameter exhaust tubing from which I cut a 2" length and fitted it to the hole:
Once I was happy with the location and fit, I welded the tubing and the engine mounting pad back on the cradle at the new height. Here it is upside down (the pad used to be flush with the bottom of the crossmember):
I also notched the rear crossmember near the transmission mounting pad. Luckily I didn't have to raise the pad, but I did have to narrow it down:
Here are both notches:
Then, because I raised the engine mounting pad, I also had to shorten the mounting brace legs accordingly. I chopped the base off but left plenty of extra material to leave the fine tuning up to the bench disk sander:
To get the right length, I had to reinstall the engine onto the cradle and prop it up at the right height while I trimmed the tubes until they just fit. Then I welded them for the last time.
With that done, I could finally get back to where I left off in my last post. I stuck the collector inside the crossmember notch with a stack of magnets, and completed the final legs of the primary tubes for cylinders 1, 7, 4 and 6:
Here's a close up of the area:
Now the collector passes handily under the engine mount and has some room to spare under the crossmember for movement:
I raised the whole assembly in the air with the hoist and snapped a few photos from underneath. This was the cleanest pic:
Then I took the collectors off, disconnected the cradle from underneath, and got ready to remove both primary exhaust systems to finish up the welding. This shot shows the system without the cradle in the way:
Once it was off, I couldn't resist the temptation to set up the system on a spare workbench and take a few photos of the stand-alone tubes:
Here's the top view:
Next step is getting them TIG welded.