Engine install in my Boling Brothers model A chassis with custom engine mounts

Ajouté : 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]All right, welcome back to Sunday Side Speed Shop. In this episode, we're going to get this 400 Pontiac into my Model A frame and build some custom motor mounts.

[00:00:12]>> [music] >> All right, here's the motor.

[00:00:25]1968 Pontiac 400 rebuilt 25 years ago by a friend of mine back in auto shop.

[00:00:32]Uh we'll see if it runs.

[00:00:35]Better. If not, I'm going to call him and tell him I want my money back, but I didn't pay him anything, so I don't know how that's going to work.

[00:00:44]Right on. I'm just waiting for my buddy Dan to get up here so we can assemble the cherry picker, hook this thing up, sling it into the frame, and then I can start figuring out how to how I'm going to make my motor mounts.

[00:01:11]Why don't you go forward?

[00:01:13]A lot. Ready?

[00:01:14]Push.

[00:01:14]>> I just did. Push. It's not Right there. Okay.

[00:01:19]Where's the hole? Okay, got it. This way.

[00:01:28]All right.

[00:01:38]All right, engine is in.

[00:01:41]After some fighting.

[00:01:45]And level side to side.

[00:01:51]Got a jack stand under the front here.

[00:01:56]Frame here is at 0.00°.

[00:02:02]Pinion angle is at 2.8, close enough to three, but I'm checking it in multiple spots. I checked it there.

[00:02:13]Check it on the oil pan flange.

[00:02:16]And over here it's actually it's actually showing 3.5.

[00:02:25]So, I'm kind of splitting the difference there.

[00:02:28]I will have a little bit of adjustment.

[00:02:29]I can always just throw a a washer or two underneath my motor mount plate to just bring it up a little bit more to get a little bit more angle if I need it.

[00:02:38]Not going to be a problem.

[00:02:40]I got my laser laser level hooked up here.

[00:02:46]Shine right down the middle of the frame, right down the middle of the crank, and all the way back.

[00:02:55]All right, I started playing around with some paper.

[00:02:58]And I got this thing laid out pretty good.

[00:03:03]There and there.

[00:03:06]It took a couple of I I didn't have the camera going for this cuz I was just, you know, back and forth, back and forth. This It would have been an hour video of me uh tracing and cutting paper. But, I did that about 100 times.

[00:03:19]And now I got the patterns actually made and finalized. I got my passenger side here and my driver side.

[00:03:29]All right, go ahead and I went ahead and bolted in my paper pattern.

[00:03:32]And it drops down perfectly.

[00:03:37]Now, I do need to keep in mind that when I'm making this out of metal, this is paper, so it's paper thin.

[00:03:46]My metal's going to be 3/16 3/16 of an inch thick, so it's going to space everything out 3/16 in over.

[00:03:55]So, I can build a little There's a little bit of adjustment there that I can get on my bend.

[00:04:04]So, what I'm going to do is just go ahead and make this whole plate, drill the two mounting holes to the engine, but not drill this hole. That way, after I make my plate and install it, I can just come in from underneath and mark mark where my hole needs to be dead on exact.

[00:04:25]So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and cut this out of the metal and then drill these holes, bend it, leave this one undrilled. That way, I can mark it and make sure it's dead nuts perfect before I drill it and that way I know it's perfect cuz I don't want to be moving the engine around to line up with the hole. I want to move the metal around to line up with hit this because the engine's set perfectly right now and I don't want to lose that.

[00:04:49]I got the right pinion angle.

[00:04:51]It's centered in the frame. It's level side to side, so I don't I don't want to mess with that.

[00:04:57]I want to make my mounts to meet these rubber mounts. I want it to be perfect.

[00:05:03]And you know, perfect, you know, within reason. I can adjust with stacking washers or whatever I got to do, but I need to make it I need to try to make it as perfect as possible.

[00:05:15]All right, got a piece of 3/16 plate.

[00:05:20]I can start laying out my I got a pile of magnets here.

[00:05:24]Laying out my uh templates. Fresh That's three All right, rich I'm going to get that one out.

[00:05:42]Now, I'm just going to go ahead and cut it out.

[00:05:47]The The that kind of sucks about this table is the depth.

[00:05:50]You'll see when I'm cutting this. Like you can only go so far and then you have to turn around and get it from the other side cuz you this is as deep as you can go. I don't know if this is like a 5-in throat or something, but you'll see.

[00:06:43]All right.

[00:06:44]Much better.

[00:06:48]All right. Now it's time to do some bending. I got my marks here.

[00:06:52]I went out and bought this at Harbor Freight just so I could bend this.

[00:06:56]This is a a press brake. It says it'll do up to 3/8 of an inch. This is only 3/16, so shouldn't be too bad.

[00:07:04]Uh it's a little it's less than a 90.

[00:07:07]I don't really know exactly the exact angle. I'm just going to put a little bend on it. I'm going to check it and then come back.

[00:07:16]All right. Good.

[00:07:29]I just walked over and checked it. It's got a ways to go.

[00:07:33]I just don't want to overdo it.

[00:07:46]>> All right, more bending.

[00:08:02]I think it does a pretty good job.

[00:08:05]179 bucks. I mean, wish it was cheaper, but hey man, it's getting the job done.

[00:08:10]Let's see if it fits. All right.

[00:08:14]Driver side is in.

[00:08:16]I was going to gusset this thing, but man, this is strong as hell. I don't know if I if I need to. I guess it couldn't hurt, right? Let's just put a little gusset from here to here.

[00:08:27]And then something on the other side as well.

[00:08:30]Definitely couldn't hurt.

[00:08:33]So, I don't know.

[00:08:36]I left these holes here. I didn't drill the pre-drill them because of any bend I make, if it's off, you know, cuz it's 3 3/8 Oh, I'm sorry. This is 3/16 of an inch thick.

[00:08:46]My paper template was paper thin. So, when I bent it, everything kind of shifted over and moved um cuz, you know, I don't really know how to do that math properly with making uh this template. I'm kind of just a dude in a garage with a a hammer and a vice. Um so, now I'm just going to take my Sharpie, go from underneath, right through the mounting hole, and give it a quick little mark.

[00:09:14]I double-checked to make sure the engine was centered.

[00:09:19]And take these bolts back out.

[00:09:33]All right, there's my mounting hole.

[00:09:35]See how it's a little off center from that?

[00:09:38]So, yeah. That's where we're at. Drill that hole and mount it up. See what it looks like.

[00:09:53]Let's see if that's big enough.

[00:09:59]Yep. Tiny bit of wiggle room, too, just the way I want it.

[00:10:21]Cool.

[00:10:24]>> [sighs] >> All right, let's see how this thing fits.

[00:10:33]Nice and flat on the pad.

[00:10:36]I like it.

[00:10:37]Now, let's just mark the motor mount bolt location.

[00:10:54]I just got to drill that and then this thing's set. But I think I think I'm going to add some gussets.

[00:11:00]I kind of have to.

[00:11:02]All right, got that drilled out.

[00:11:04]You'll notice that it isn't quite the My hole isn't quite centered to this arch and I made it bigger on purpose.

[00:11:13]Cuz I knew that my measurements might be a little off. So, now I can go to my desired size, center it, draw that circle, and now I can grind it to kind of better meets meet that arch.

[00:11:43]>> Cool. Let's go see how it looks.

[00:11:53]Perfect.

[00:11:55]Now I think I can add a gusset from down here all the way up to here.

[00:12:03]All right, I got my makeshift workbench here. I'm just clamping this thing to the frame.

[00:12:07]My extension cord I don't have an extension cord for 220 extension cord for my welder, so I can't bring it to the other side of the garage. So I'm bringing the part to my welder.

[00:13:31]>> All right, after a whole lot of grinding, here we are.

[00:13:37]Not bad looking.

[00:13:39]I wonder if it's still going to be strong enough. I mean, the the pad contacts like a lot of this, so there's not a lot that's unsupported.

[00:13:46]Um I guess I'll find out if it bends or not.

[00:13:49]Um yeah.

[00:13:51]Looks pretty good. Let me uh go ahead and spritz this with some black spray paint and then uh put it on the car.

[00:13:57]This is eventually going to get powder coated, but for now, a little bit of rattle can will be fine.

[00:14:03]All right, there's the two brackets with a few coats of paint on them.

[00:14:10]Now I can put them back on.

[00:14:54]That's it. Motor installed.

[00:15:00]Motor mount plates turned out pretty good.

[00:15:05]I'm pretty happy with them.

[00:15:19]These gussets, nice.

[00:15:22]Sit nice on the biscuit and I checked double check my opinion angle and it and it remained the same. So, man, this is awesome. Now I can start trying to figure out exhaust, steering.

[00:15:38]I think the next step is going to be to put the front axle back on and get some wheels on it and then get this thing on the ground.

[00:15:47]And then uh set the body on the frame.

[00:15:53]Start looking at firewall clearance.

[00:15:57]Start looking at steering.

[00:15:59]Pontiac has a starter on this side, so that's going to be tight for my steering. Going to see how that all plays out. Maybe a mini starter.

[00:16:06]Going to have to notch going to have to clearance the transmission for my brake pedal.

[00:16:14]Going to mess with that.

[00:16:17]But it's coming together.

[00:16:20]Set this thing down at ride height, measure for my drive shaft.

[00:16:24]Throw it in park so I don't have to worry about it rolling away.

[00:16:27]Awesome.

[00:16:29]All right, that's it for this episode.

[00:16:31]Got the motor mounts made. Motor is permanently installed. Not permanently, it's coming back out. I'm going to paint everything, powder coat this frame, but it's sitting in the frame. It's bolted in.

[00:16:41]Semi ready to go.

[00:16:45]Next steps, exhaust and starter, set the body on here, start building this car.

[00:16:49]Man, I'm super super excited. Super excited.

[00:16:53]Thanks a lot for watching.

[00:16:54]See you on the next one.