'95 F-150 track ready street beast

[Sbeck09]

OK suspension theory aside for a minute (we will return to that after this update), I got the more pressing matter of frame boxing and engine/trans mounts going this past weekend.

I was both excited and nervous to get these started. I knew the frame being straight as a winding road would make boxing....interesting. On top of that I wanted to make sure the driveline angle matched the irs while being as low as I could safely and physically go.

First up after the initial test fit was to notch my front cross member. Nothing quite like cutting a chunk out of a day's work.



This is after an inch notch so I could lower the entire engine/trans package. It kept just hitting the floor of the cab when I was matching the pinion angles and I'm really trying to avoid a bunch of sheet metal work this time. In a perfect world I would have moved the entire oil pan behind the cross member (5 inches back) and lowered it another 2-3 inches down. I then remembered that I've already gone wayyyyyyy further with this project than I ever intended and doing more setback meant all new sheet metal behind the engine bulge of the firewall. No thank you. Every cylinder is behind the front axle. I'm calling this good. You can already see how much I've had to modify the firewall for valve cover clearance.

So the inch worked and now I needed to prep the frame to have mounts and braces welded to it. My AWESOME neighbor (seriously my neighbors are better than yours) cut me strips of "scrap" 3/16 steel plate to box the frame. But I wanted to add in some internal support behind the plate around where the trans would mount (or so I thought).



You may notice the cab is like RIGHT THERE. Yeah...my dumbass crawled under this thing to cut, trim, and weld this portion. Not fun even at 28. Then it finally clicked that I needed to remove the cab anyway. Duh.



And then it was much easier. Also, check out that cab moving system. Yeah that's bricks and furniture dollies. It worked pretty well to just roll back and gave basically all the room I needed to do this center section of frame. One day I'll have a real shop of my own with help. This was solo.

With a good foundation to mount everything I tacked those Ruff Stuff motor mounts I've had hidden in a box. Little pricey, but man they are nice. VERY easy to mount and align. I'd recommend these to anyone with a SBF that likes this poly mount all the LS swaps use.



Then I shimmed everything to match my 3 degrees of pinion angle and leveled the motor. Suddenly I realized those tubes I added to mount the rear of the lower control arms were the perfect base for my motor mount stand offs.





Ta da! And no header interference for once. I'll add a little bracing to these just to tie everything together.

This also gave me a reason to bust out my new notcher from Rogue Fab that I got with my bender. If you're in the market, get this one. I've used many and this is the best I've touched so far. Ignore my cramped work space.



Then I started on the trans mount. I thought I would go to the plating on the frame rails. So here is V1.





Not a fan. Its long and would need loops for the exhaust. Just didn't seem like the right move. I don't have enough tubing yet, but those poly mounts will be moved to mount on the chassis "X" that I'm doing next. Then I'll have more exhaust space and it will all tie together better.

This push allowed me to return the pan and head I borrowed from the engine builder. He is working on knocking my build out over the next couple weeks.

So now I need you guys to weigh in. I'm going to have to wire this beast from scratch. I know that I want it to all be the new solid state stuff. So think PDU, PDM, etc. I can't decide which one. Mainly because of the switches each is compatible with. So far I'm looking at:

Rywire PDM
ECU Master PDU
Racepak Smartwire Streetwire
Cartek PDM16

All of these are expensive for me and additional switches make it worse, but the whole truck will run through this except A/C and window motors. I don't like wiring failures and the ease of use combined with the reliability is hard to ignore. Weigh in your thoughts or experiences. Any vendors wanna help a brother out a little for some fender space?