I have the patterns for the brackets drawn on my plate. If I can get some free time this evening, I'll see if I can get them cut and drilled. That's really the last hurdle before wrapping up plumbing and wiring.

Getting closer on the brackets…


This will mount the oil cooler and should give me a place on the forward side to mount the circuit breaker and starter solenoid. Cut from 1/4-inch plate.


Oil filter-head bracket. Taken from a trace of an HP 500 filter-head bracket, but with added material for the three-bolt mounting pattern. It’s 1/8-inch plate which should be fine (the HP 500 bracket was 3/8 thick but holds a lot of weight).

Question on the TRS bell housing… what’s the plug at the top used for? Inspection?

My oil cooler assemblies will cover the plugs.

I don’t know if you could do much more than look through one of those holes. I wouldn’t be too concerned about covering them. Are you using a jigsaw to cut your acc. brackets? Diablo makes some really good finish wood blades that work like a laser if you keep everything wet with WD-40 as you cut. It looks like your blades are getting it done. Nice work

I’m embarrassed to admit how I cut them. Or maybe it’ll impress some! I did the rough cuts with 4-inch angle grinder, then used said grinder to clean it up some. I learned the angle grinder finesse thing from a ship welder friend of mine and have gotten pretty good at it. Final shaping was done with a bench grinder and hand files. I cut the pieces Tuesday evening, took a break yesterday for my birthday (worked a tiny bit on the small pieces), then got after it this evening after dinner. Threw in the towel around midnight.

Progress…

Well, we’ve got one running!!

Sounds awesome! Congrats.

Very cool sounds great

Great job Tom. I know you’re stoked to have one test fired. Sounds like a bilge full of fun to me.

Thank you sir. Heading out to work on the other one for an hour or so.

I dropped my tailpipes off at the fabricator to have O2 bungs added. Just need to pick a meter.

I posted in the tech forum… my MPI Delco distributor isn’t playing well. The engine started right up but not seeing any advance. The running in the video was with timing sitting at 16 degrees. So that’s something to figure out.

Also have some leaking of the heat exchanger end caps. I’ll pop them off, clean everything, and then I’ll seal with high-tack.

Coming along.