I'm curious about the bulges in the floor, I was expecting it to be flat. Are those pieces from passenger cars welded into the frame? How does it look from below?
Reading the schedule in the petty racing experience website, they do events in speedways only. Are you planning on modifying the suspension to turn right before attending autocross or track days?
This thread has been both informative and entertaining, please keep the updates coming. And congratulations for the wedding!
In reply to 2_3 :
I feel like I read somewhere that the floor pans are based on some 50s Chevy floor pan or some such thing and were basically a rules requirement for stock cars. However, I can't find that source so take my words with a heavy dose of salt. I don't have any good pics of the underside of the car but it's got a pretty beefy perimeter frame with cross bars for the massive truck arms and other stuff to mount to.
The suspension is not set up for circle track right now, though I haven't taken any measurements to know exactly where everything is alignment-wise. But a circle track car has crazy positive camber on the driver's front wheel and negative camber on the passenger side, and this car is pretty much straight up and down on both sides. Everything looks pretty symmetrical to the eye, but once I get it back up and running suspension tuning will be high on my list.
Thanks, and thanks for reading!
This project isn't dead! After 6 months of living away from the car my wife and I moved back to my old town, and after settling in I have finally touched the car again! Progress is slow, but it's still progress. The current task - reattach the oil pan and put the engine back in the car. I bought a new oil pan gasket from Oreilley that I thought should fit, but when I went to put it in the car, I encountered this problem:
(sorry for the poor picture quality, my new phone's camera is terrible)
It's hard to see in the pics, but the gasket at the front appears to be too thick, so the pan is pinching it and can't be pushed up against the block. Unfortunately I don't have the old gasket to compare the new one to anymore - it came off in a million pieces and had crazy amounts of silicone sealer holding it in place. I took this new gasket out and discovered that I had somehow managed to ruin it in my installation attempt:
I must have pinched the back corner near the flywheel pretty hard. Good thing I took the pan back off.
So now the task is finding an oil pan gasket that will fit. I believe the gasket I got was from a '94 Dodge Ram 5.9 Magnum. However, this engine block has a tough-to trace engine casting number:
From my research, it appears that this is eather a 1992 or 1993 engine, which was apparently a transition year (great).
Most of this seems to deal with internal differences, no mention of oil pans. I guess the next step is to take the broken oil pan gasket back to the parts store and see if it differs from the pans from a 1992 0r 1993 truck engine. If anyone knows these old Mopars I'd love any thoughts.
Another oil pan dead end. I had ordered a multi-piece gasket kit for the LA-360 Mopar thinking that an older design might help, but no luck again. The sides looked good, but the front and back rubber arches were not the right fit. Sigh. the search continues.
I wish I still had the gasket I took off. It was a multi-piece affair, held in place with an insane amount of silicone sealer. The side gaskets came off in about a million little pieces, but the front and rear rubber seals came out in one piece. I still have the rear seal, but the front seems to have disappeared long ago. Unfortunately that's the one that would make finding a new match much easier. I guess I'll keep researching and comparing.
Is there any chance that the pan might not be made for this engine, but instead made to fit?
Judging by the hodgepodge collection of parts seemingly put together to look good instead of serving any function - like the external pump and even the dead ended lines, I wouldn't be surprised. Especially since it was held together basically with silicon sealer and hopes.
The mechanical fuel pump is an earlier front cover.
What year are you trying to buy gaskets for?
Honestly, look at about a 78 360. Or a 70 340 for oil pan gasket. Itll be multi piece, but should get you home. Assuming I'm remembering correctly. The guys over on moparts.org can probably get you right where you need to be pretty quick if not.
Frankly, I'd use Permatex Ultra Black without a gasket.
In reply to APEowner :
I've been considering going this direction more and more. I don't have a lot of confidence in finding a gasket that actually fits correctly. I have no idea where this pan came from before they modified it and this might be the simplest solution.
I would take the gasket to the oldest auto parts store in town (like a NAPA) and see if they have an "experienced" guy (IE: old fart like me!) working there, then ask him. Take the old gasket end parts if you still have them and the pan......see what he says.
Alternatively, if you can find a race shop that races Dodge engines, they may be able to look at the pics and tell you what to use. I had no idea there would be a lot of choices for Dodge oil pans.....
In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :
I don't use pan gaskets on any old school V8s anymore. RTV used to be considered cobbling but OEMs have been using it on sheet metal to casting joints since the '80s.
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