I am in the process of cutting the hump between the seats to fit the Gear Vendors overdrive. I noticed that the drive shaft was sitting slightly of center to the pass side at the front yoke, and loosened the motor mount bolts to see if I could wiggle it a bit, and by golly, there is a quite a bit of room for adjusting the engine angle from side to side.

The question then comes up, how do you know when it is right? It seems the engine must be a true 90 degrees to the rear axle. To run free of vibration the front and rear angle must be the same, regardless of what that is. If I remember my high school geometry correctly, in order for them to be the same the engine and rear must be at 90 degrees. How would one figure this out? It seems like a real challenge in accurate measuring. If one had the factory drive shaft angle gauge, which does not depend upon gravity to work, (as does a level) you could simply measure the angle of the u-joints on the side. Maybe it is worth a trip to Taneytown to borrow Charles Brooks' gauge. Any other ideas? Maybe I could make a jig or use a straight edge in some way.

Sam

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Put a straight edge across the crank pulley.

Measure against something in engine compartment.


Rotate engine 180 degrees and measure again to see if there's a wobble in pulley.


If the pulley is straight, align engine so that straight edge is parallel to rear axle (I leave that up to you.......)

If the pulley wobbles, you need to make 2 measurements with a 180 degree rotation between the measurements, and use the average....

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

I think this is a germ of an idea. maybe put reference marks on the bottom of the engine pan relating to the pulley then use a laser pointer. I have a vision of using an alignment rack in some way. What is really important is if it is square to the wheels, and that they are square to each other. The alignment rack would determine if the rear is square.

Sam

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