Triumph Sports Cars

Ready to lower the car. I videoed a little of the car going down, but had to put the camera down to help

Here we see the car after it has been lowered onto the subframe. We bolted up the subframe with spacers, tied the tail of the transmission up, and lifted it all back up in the air on Jim's lift. It sure is great to have a brother with such cool tools.

Here is what it looked like when before fine tuning positioning. The hood closed flush.

First positioning of the shifter. It ended up closer to the front of the hole.

Notice how nicely everything fits!

Unmodified TR7 subframe, except we cut the motor mount off the top. The 1UZ sump just fits.

The start of the right side motor mount fabrication

The engine is blocked to the proper height and clearance for oil filter, steering rack

and header flanges:

That's going to be awesome! Can't wait to see it.

Jim shows off his crazy-mad fabrication skills:

Drivers side motor mount from the rear on the last post. Here it is from the front.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 09:32PM by Dan B.

We used a stock Supra mount for the transmission and Jim modified the TR7 crossmember.

Engine and transmission are bolted in, ready to go to the barn until next time.

I just wanted to reiterate that the engine slid in from the bottom with ZERO mods to the engine bay, firewall, or tunnel. You know the saying, "It went right in like it belonged there." Well, it really did.

Also, that motor mount nut pic does not do justice to the ingenious solution. The motor mount stud was not long enough to protrude through the thick aluminum bracket. Several ideas were kicked around. Then, Jim enlarged the hole in the aluminum, took an oversized allen cap screw, lopped off the threads at the smooth shank, gun drilled it to the cap and tapped threads inside. Solved. Next.

Dan has a brother with cool tools that knows how to use them!

Dan, did you remember to close up the air intake before putting the Triumph in the shed?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2013 12:41AM by MGBV8.

Really cool project! Anxious to see it.

Yes, we put a mailing tube cap in it and tape over the water inlet/outlets.

These guys give away too much credit. They both had ideas and suggestions that made this thing go so smoothly and my first approach on that mount stud was a complete failure until they helped figure it out. I do wish we had a shot of that nut from the top though, it's a pretty cool piece. I think maybe Dan came up with the idea of using a bolt and Carl had the idea to go to the 5/8" size and in the end it really worked great. But regardless of who did what, we really worked well together.

I think at this point we have somewhere around 60 to 80 hours max in on the car (I probably should have documented the time but when it's your brother's car why would you?), times 3 guys both weekends for probably something around 175 to 200 man hours counting errands over two long weekends. And I'm thinking that's not too shabby going from the stock TR7 to this point on a first attempt. Considering we also managed to get a little work done on the Chump car while we were at it of course was a plus.

Jim

Good work guys!

Great work.

You really are going to have to give some thought into the front brakes though. The stock TR7/8 brakes are marginal, about the right size for a Mini (the original ones), not something putting out that kind of horespower.

Also, you may want to take a peek at the rear trailing arm, body mounts. They are a real weak point on these cars. The bodies rust out there and the arm mounting holes are usually oval'd. I did a fair bit of bracing and welding to stiffen up all of that area when I did my conversion to V8.

Enjoy!

Martin

Hey Dan it looks like you're having a ball I just have a couple questions how much horsepower does a motor like that make and what kind of rearend do you put behind it

The stock SC400 engine is supposed to put out 265 hp. I am going with the stock 3.45 Triumph rear end at least for now

I do plan to upgrade the brakes at some point. I did find out, however, that the stock brakes were vastly improved when I installed Hawk pads. I went from having lots of fade in the mountains to none. Jim & Ken drove it on the dragon last year and the brakes did fine. Thanks for the tip on the rear suspension too!