The block is 1970... My problem was getting the motor mounts to fit, the drivers side (I had to grind the mount to get a flush fit the block).
Wow Hickboy. I think that's the first time I've heard of someone with an old block having the issue. Sorry you experienced that.
You too Green Bastard, but with your '94 that's right in the area of question about grinding, so was almost to be expected, like you said. But still interesting to get feedback.
We ran into it first with (only some) late model 302 blocks. Which probably means that some late model 351's have the issue too, but a '70 model? Did you happen to take some pics of the problem? Or of your fix?
Again, sorry you were not able to use the parts as delivered. Be very interested in hearing any details you have.
The biggest issue I had was to get the tail of the tranny mount to line up far enough away from the drivers side slots in the Xmember. I had the motor on a lift still and could not clock the motor enough with the mounts hitting far front on the passenger side on aft on the drivers side. I ended up grinding the V shaped holes to let the motor mount not to be stressed with a pry bar. Am i missing something?
I don't think you're missing anything. But what you're saying is that you had to notch the slots in the engine towers forward-and-back so that you could move the transmission over? Or was it more in need of moving the transmission rearward on one side?
We certainly had our issues with the NV3550 mounts to a year or two ago (probably the same, or a very similar crossmember as the AX), but they were theoretically resolved when A/A made some changes to the holes (notching and elongating where needed) that supposedly helped that.
Since then I haven't seen mention of the issue here, or heard anyone at the shop saying they had any customers with any issues.
Again, got any pics?
There are several possibilities of course. Defective parts, bent frame, simple tweakage from removing and replacing so many things. But the first suspect has to be the new parts so that we can be sure it doesn't keep happening.
There will always be EB's that, once you remove the stock crossmember, don't seem to line back up just right. Members here have run into that just re-installing their stock stuff. But if you add all of that together, along with a part that was manufactured slightly off, and you get a real headache.
Probably too late to take measurements, and you did get it together (congrats on that!) but it sounds like it was more work than you should have had to go through.
And the same for the motor mounts. Again, sorry about that.
Very interested to hear more.
This was a discussion more about the Explorer brackets and our motor mounts, so a bit off-topic perhaps. If it gets too involved we can carry on the conversation elsewhere. In the meantime though I think we can add a couple of extra posts to this thread without getting yelled at by the others.
Might end up being pertinent at least partially anyway.
Paul
