Yes, it’s me again. I guess the motivation switch has flipped again and I’m back to doing stuff. Basically, I’m continuing with the goal of finishing layout stuff that I want the engine in place for; once that’s done, I’ll remove it again to provide good access for poking holes and such into the firewall, and then when it goes back on it can be permanent.
One thing I’ve been mulling over a bit for a week or so has been the location and layout of the pressure sender manifold. This little dude gets mounted on the firewall, with incoming lines for fuel and oil pressure, and then the actual pressure senders get attached as well. An interesting tidbit here is the orientation of this device. For whatever reason, the OP plans for an injected engine call for placing the manifold vertically, and adding a small stiffener on the backside of the firewall for support. The carbureted OP plans, on the other hand, place it horizontally, and the existing firewall angle provided support.
It seems to me that it’d be much easier to use the horizontal placement and not have to add an extra piece. I asked around on the Van’s forum and there seems to be no reason for the orientation difference, and plenty of people have done the horizontal setup, so that’s why I’m going with. So I installed the oil pressure fitting on the engine block, installed the fittings on the manifold, and put the hoses in place. This allowed me to experiment with placement, and ensure that I liked the way the houses were routed.
With a little bit of trial and error, I worked out the location I wanted, as well as which two of the three manifold ports I’d be using. This will be ready for the mount points to be drilled once the engine comes off:
Next was the age-old problem – working out the battery mount area. I’ve mulled this one to death, over and over again, and it’s past time to stop mulling and start doing. At first I was going to use some cardboard to mock up the mount plate, but given that things are pretty straightforward here, I decided to go straight to cutting on one of my sheet pieces I bought for this. Here again, it took a bit of trial and error to get the angles to match like I wanted, but I’ve at least got this roughly cut the way I want it:
My general idea of how to go from here will be to find a way to fix this in place on the firewall, and then do a full mockup with the battery box, as well as the master and starter contactors. Once I get that done and I’m happy with the layout, I think it’ll be time to pull the engine and start making holes…which is a little scary, but it’s got to be done.