SBC 350 mounted catty whompus

[woody2]

Hello all-

The PO of my 78 FJ40 indicated the SBC 350 was put in back in 1980, or so. It has the original 4 speed tranny and transfer case. He told me they made their own mounting brackets and purchased no particular kit for the transplant. It has driven great for me, thus far. It did have an extreme lean to the passenger side when I got it, about a year ago. Shims and such took care of most of the lean.

I have recently been digging into the rig and noticed the engine is mounted catty whompus. It appears to be about an inch closer to the fire wall on the passenger side than on the driver side.

Now for the questions:
Will the misaligned mounting cause long term issues?
Could this be the cause of the lean, due to the years of engine torque in that direction?

Thanks,
Woody

 

[Tigerstripe40]

The engine conversion was done in 1980?
It's now 2009. 29 years later. I think that's pretty long term. Any problems with it being mounted that way would have shown up by now...

Land Cruisers Lean.
It's an immutable law of Land Cruisers. You can bust your knuckles trying to 'correct' it. But I think the time and effort is better spent on other stuff.

 

[Downey]

Tigerstripe is very close on his opinion of the notorious Landcruiser lean. My guess is that it has alot to do with the hot rivited frame that flexes like wet noodles???
As far as the engine misplacement, you're lucky that the Landcruiser drive shaft u-joints eat up alot of slop, they'll darn near let you mount the engine sideways---not really, but you get my point. I'd want to clean up the engine position as a matter of pride, probably cleaning up alot of other issues as a by-product, but no doubt requiring some exhaust system rework. We do sell weld-on frame brackets only if you need them for remounting. In fact, PM me because engine position has alot to do with cooler running, and I can offer some tidbits of info on this.

 

[terrx]

Right/passenger side head on a gen1 SBC is offset about 1" back from the driver side. Valve cover and/or head to firewall measurement will be about 1" difference.

Measure the center of crank pulley to frame rails. Is it centered? Some conversions offset the motor up to 1" towards driver side for better trans/tcase alignment, but others just centered it.

 

[woody2]

I had noticed the passenger side being closer to the fire wall some time ago, but didn't think anything of it. The rig was running great.

The only reason I ask now is that I had the radiator out for repair and noticed the fan looked slanted. It looked to be closer to the radiator on the driver side.

This rig has never had a problem with overheating, so I don't plan on changing anything right now. I was just wondering about any problems that may pop up.

I had not considered that it has been 29 years running in this configuration.

Thanks to all for the input.

Woody