Update on the engine cradle issues:
I talked a little more about my problem over on
buddylee64's thread about ISO's.
It was suggested that my rails must have warped during welding, something called "distortion" in welding lingo. I figured I was going to have to either heat the welds up with a set of torches (that I don't have) or grind them out and do over.
Tonight, I went out to the garage and decided to try and bend the rails inward a little, so I put them in the vise and brought them in 1/4". They did, indeed, fit onto the ISOs better.
But my oil pan would not mount up any longer. The holes were too close together.
Alright, now I know it's not all due to distortion. I bent the rails back out to fit the oil pan (which, by the way, makes them nice and parallel as they were when I welded them) and started trying to figure out what the heck.
It turns out that the frame itself is bent where the ISOs sit. The old ISOs were shot, and the K321 was torquing on the frame. Here's a look at what I'm talking about - the metal is not all that rigid here:
So I grabbed the frame with vise grips and bent these surfaces to the proper angle. It's kind of hard to describe, but the angle at which the ISOs rested on the frame, and the angle at which the bolts came through was causing all of the misalignment issues.
And finally, the engine cradle is mounted up and ready to provide a temporary home for the K341 from the 1650 project.
