The big thing was that on Saturday morning my buddy John helped me drop the engine block into Matilda to check if these 1965 Bel Air motor mounts were going to work.
This was just a check to see if the mounts would line up correctly with the frame mounts, so it was just the bare block and the mounts. It occurred to me later that I should have put the oil pan on the block, just to make sure it wouldn't interfere with anything.
Everything seemed to line up well, though. There's no guarantee that the frame mounts that are in there are the original ones from the factory, so I tried to check around online a little bit to see if I was supposed to have something else for a big block Impala. But, it looks like these ones are correct, so that's good.
Even though it was just the bare block, it feels good to see the engine in the car. We just pulled it right back out, though, and put it back on the stand. It's supposed to take a couple weeks for my transmission to arrive, and then I'll be able to try fitting the engine block, bellhousing and transmission all together, to check that the transmission mount lines up right with the crossmember, and to see where the hole in the floor for the shifter is going to need to be.
I also painted some of my engine parts that I cleaned up over the past few weeks. I got a plastic drop cloth from Harbor Freight, put it down in the garage, and sprayed the oil pan, the rocker covers and the timing cover (the fifth part in the picture is the timing mark indicator which bolts on with the timing cover).
I was looking at the bottom of the oil pan as I was painting it. It's kind of scraped up and smashed in, so it seemed a little dumb to be putting so much effort into cleaning it up and painting it. But it was already scraped up and smashed in when I bought Bertha, so I like that whenever I change Matilda's oil, I'll be seeing those same old scrapes and dents.
The rocker covers look great after paint, like shiny and new. My first thought when I saw them was that they looked so nice and clean. My second thought was, I can't wait til they're dirty again!
I also took a Brakleen cap and sprayed some of the Chevy Engine Orange into that cap, then took a paint brush and painted the "Edelbrock Performer 2-O" lettering on my intake manifold.
I had planned to start laying out where my rear window blowout strap mounting points would need to go, but once the garage floor was covered with wet painted parts and overspray, I decided to just stay out of the garage until I could move all that out of the way.
I started to work on measuring for where the blowout straps would go during the Super Bowl pregame this evening, but I quickly realized that I was going to need someone else to hold the other end of the tape measure, so I guess that will wait until I can get a little help with it.
I think the priorities for next weekend will be cleaning up some stuff around the garage, measuring for the blowout straps and hopefully getting started on making those modifications.
Trying to keep moving along....
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