While the sump is away to be welded I have been working on a couple of things, firstly cut up the oil pump pickup, made a new mounting plate and modified the rest to suit the altered sump, I don't have a picture of the finished part after it was silver soldered together.

Also the temporary adjustable gearbox mount I had made to get the gearbox sitting correctly while I made the engine mounts needed to be replaced.
 
Starting with a piece of 100 x 50 RHS chopped down I have got the basic shape made up.

 
 
 
 

Looking good Blue,
Been a bit quiet of late but still enjoying reading your updates. Keep up the good work mate.
Cheers Drew

Thanks Drew, have more time now the year is progressing and kids are doing school etc.
 
Finished the gearbox cross member.

 

Now working on raising the tunnel as the Getrag is quite a tall box.
Also need to modify the shifter linkage mechanism and make a mount for it.

 
 

Some more pictures to bore you all with!
The first one shows how high the transmission sits above the tunnel. So cut out the stiffener and raised it by 50mm, wife was at work so got it welded back in today. 


Also got around to shortening the Jaguar shifter mechanism and making a bracket for the rubber isolater. I will look at a one of the umpteen BMW short throw shifter options later down the track if needs be, don't think it would take much effort to fit one into the Jag gearshift support.

 

Hi Guys,
Coming in a bit late on this but 'better late than never'. I wish among many things Santa would bring me an English wheel?
Have been restoring my V6 GT over the last few years. Essentially a tweaked engine to a T5 onto a Falcon BW diff.
Amazing the little things you don't think of though. The radius (trailing) arms were about 6mm short and of course it dawned on me the Falcon axle housings are about 13mm larger dia than the Atlas. So had a set of adjustable arms fabricated by McDonald Bros.
The main reason I wrote is to post some pics of the tunnel conversion. The T5 sits high like your Getrag Blue so off came the top of the tunnel. A few pics attached. I really did not want to cut into the tunnel as now the car can never really be 'original'.
I fabricated a new cross member and used ally plates to allow it to be raised/lowered as appropriate to adjust pinion angle. By the way Spicer has some good literature online regarding drive line setup.

Hi Mark, nice Falcon you have, i'm one of those "should never have sold it" ones i'm sure you always come across when it comes to Coupes.
 
They are some good points you make, I had wondered about the radius rods not lining up, I did make a jig off the old housing and had to take some material off the brackets to get them to line up due to the housing diameter. I have a set of bushes on my shopping list to fit and install in the car to and will pay close attention to this issue. The brackets are only tacked on at the moment so can be shifted pretty easily. Were the bushes in your arms the offset type like original ones?
 
I will check out the Spicer web site, thanks for the tip, I haven't found much on setting up a two piece prop yet.
 
I can understand your apprehension about cutting a V6 shell although I thought a T5 would fit under the original tunnel. Looks nice and strong, and fits well, you will have to start a thread on the build.
 
Got my tunnel formed and nearly ready to be welded in, just need to find a shifter boot and form the hole to suit it.

 
 

Thanks for the feedback Blue. I will try to find a minute to get some pics up in chronological order.
The bushes are still SuperFlex but out of a Commodore (hedonistic, sorry). Yes they are eccentric, I always assumed this was to allow 'rotation' as the pinion angle varied when driving?
I think you will want to look at having them adjustable unless you can set up your pinion angle (shimming the diff mounting plates on leaf springs?) before locking the radius arms into place. I would have had a go at building them but my engineer is a bit of a stickler so it just seemed better to lose the battle and win the war on some areas of the build.
Onto the tunnel. Unfortunately because of the increased height, I cannot reinstall the heater box without removing the bottom section of the box. so looks like its fresh air all the way, for now.
I got a couple of shifter boots (got a couple of builds on the go) on fleabay. They are generic but size wise good.
 

Thought it was about time for an update, got the tunnel welded in and primed.
 
One of the "one step forward two steps back"things were the front S13 caster rods and mounts. The rods didn't allow for enough room for a sway bar so some S15 arms that are about 20mm longer and have a kink in them have been fitted to re-positioned front mounts.


So cross member is almost completed just a few small pieces to be welded next time it in out of the car, and best of all the engineer is happy.
 

My 15yo. daughter was asking why it's taking so long to build the car, I explained to her it was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle only using pieces from a dozen jigsaws to make it.
So another couple of pieces of the puzzle I have picked up are some Alfa GTV seats and a Mazda RX7 radiator. Now to see how they fit!

Hi Blue, Really nice work. It takes patience and determination to go as far as you have.
My daughter knows better than to ask, why so long? She just rolls her eyes.
I'm curious to know if desired camber and caster are going to be achievable?
Whereabouts are you located?